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BJP's 'Goli Maro' Candidate Kapil Mishra Loses From Delhi's Model Town

Aam Aadmi Party’s Akhilesh Pati Tripathi won by over 11,000 votes.
File image of Kapil Mishra.
Hindustan Times via Getty Images
File image of Kapil Mishra.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Kapil Mishra, who chanted “desh ke gaddaron ko” at a pro-CAA rally in December, lost from the Model Town constituency by over 11,000 votes. Aam Aadmi Party’s Akhilesh Pati Tripathi won and Congress’s Akanksha Ola finished third.

Mishra congratulated AAP and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. “It means we have somewhere failed to connect with the people of Delhi,” he was quoted as saying by ANI.

Tripathi called it a victory of development and people of Delhi. “It is a reply to people who wanted to divide the country and disturb communal harmony. It is the victory of Arvind Kejriwal’s dream of a beautiful Delhi,” he told ANI.

Mishra led a march in Delhi on 20 December in support of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and a video of him shouting the inflammatory slogan surfaced on social media.

Though the Delhi BJP had distanced itself from Mishra’s march and the resultant controversy at the time, several party leaders were later caught on camera encouraging the same slogan. BJP leader and Union minister Anurag Thakur encouraged the it at an election rally in Delhi, after which he was banned for 72 hours from campaigning in the national capital.

The Election Commission had also banned Mishra from campaigning for 48 hours on 25 January after his communal tweets.

Mishra was the Water Resource Minister in the Arvind Kejriwal government, but he was sacked from the Cabinet in May 2017. Later, he was also suspended from the party’s primary membership after accusing the Chief Minister and AAP leader Satyendra Jain of corruption.

He joined the BJP in August last year. He was disqualified as an MLA under the anti-defection law after campaigning for the BJP during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Mishra was elected from the Karawalnagar seat in the last election.

Tripathi had won the Model Town seat in 2015 by over 16,000 votes.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.