Babujichunavhamareliyetehvaarjaisahota, har party hamenpoochtihai, naqdiaursamagri ka laluchdetihai,chunavke bad hamen koi poochtabhinahi” (For slum dwellers like us, elections are like festivals because every party candidate comes to us and offers to buy our support with cash and kind. After the election, no one shows up,” said Mahesh (name changed), a slum resident in KondliAssembly segment.
“Jo bhi party Dilli assembly election jeetihai,woh jhuggi jhopdike vote se jeet hai, banglow main rehanewalo se nahi, magar jab jeet jatehainwoh khud ko bananelagtehain, hamennahin”. “Whichever party wins Delhi Assembly elections, it would be due to the votes of jhuggi-jhopdi (JJ) and slum dwellers, not huge house owners. But once elected, they first help themselves and not the voters,” neighbour Usha said.
There are three lakh households in Delhi’s 675 slums and JJ clusters, which make up a significant 10% of the city’s electorate. Out of 70 constituencies, 55 have slums and JJ clusters, out of which in 20 they can have direct impact on the electoral outcome, meaning that parties vied for the support of the slum voters through cash and kind or the announcement of freebies. This is the common feature of every election as these dwellers are the most vulnerable segment of voters because of their pity condition.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) attributes distributing cash to voters is one of the reasons for its defeat in the recent assembly. The whole world saw how the BJP candidate Parvesh Verma from New Delhi constituency was allegedly distributing cash to women voters. During the election campaign, Delhi Chief minister Atishi held a press conference and claimed that Verma “has been caught red-handed”, displaying images and videos of ladies leaving Verma’s home with ₹1,100 and registration papers.
“Parvesh was caught red-handed distributing cash at his official residence, 20 Windsor Place. Women were brought in from different slums and colonies of the constituency, asked to fill forms featuring Parvesh Verma’s photo and were given ₹1,100 in envelopes after submitting their voter IDs,” Atishialleged.
BJP national general secretary Vinod Tawde was also caught in a similar act in Mumbai during the Maharashtra assembly election.
Former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal also levelled the same allegations on Verma. Kejriwal said that he visited multiple pockets of the New Delhi constituency to check the issue. In a series of posts on X, Kejriwal said: “These people are giving ₹1,100 to every voter and asking them to vote for their party. Are you helping the needy or openly buying votes? Your father must be ashamed of a traitor son like you.”
However, the Election Commission did not swing into action on both the occasions despite the demand of action and a fair inquiry.
In the end, Kejriwal lost to Verma from his home constituency. Following back-to-back near sweeps in the 2015 and 2020 elections, AAP was only able to secure 22 seats.
The AAP has cited the middle class’s voting behaviour, the absence of private meetings, and BJP’s “money, muscle, and fear” tactics as the three main causes of its loss in the Delhi Assembly elections.
Manish Sisodia, former deputy chief minister and senior leader of the party, said the party’s defeat in the assembly elections was caused by the blatant abuse of public funds, government machinery, and alcohol during the election process. Sisodia lost Jangpura seat to BJP’s Tarvinder Singh Marwah (a Congress turncoat) by 675 votes.
When asked what key factors influenced the outcome, Sisodia said that “contesting an election in such an unfair environment – where money, liquor, and even household goods like sarees were openly distributed, and state machinery was misused – was no easy task.”
The analysis of Association for Democratic Reforms’ report revealed the astounding amount of money that was handed over during this election. Only one MLA was a billionaire during the 2020 Delhi assembly elections, compared to three billionaires among the 70 successful candidates. In 2025 Assembly Elections, the average wealth of the victorious candidates is ₹22.04 crores. In 2020 Assembly Elections, the average assets per MLA were ₹14.29 crore.
Coming back on the slum factor, basic problems with water, sanitation, education, and health still plague Delhi’s slums and JJ clusters in spite of freebies and other populist charity programmes.
According to a recent survey, NCT of Delhi has 1.2 million Regularised Colonies, 0.5 million Unauthorised Colonies, 1.3 million J.J. Clusters, 1.2 million Resettlement Colonies, 0.5 million Urban Villages, 0.5 million Rural Areas, and 10.8 million Slum Designated Areas.This shows that roughly three-fourths of the population live in substandard housing. Basic amenities are either non-existent or extremely limited in many colonies. For instance, there is no basic infrastructure in the Jhuggi-Jhopdi Clusters and other informal settlements.
Parks, playgrounds, community centres, drainage and sewage systems, and other common amenities are lacking in these colonies. The government’s approaches to these colonies have been often ad-hoc basis.
Historically, these slum inhabitants supported Congress, but in the last three elections – 2013, 2015, and 2020 –AAP won their support. The BJP received the most votes from these colonies this time. When, during the 2015 elections, Kejriwal’s statement exhorting voters of slum colonies to take cash and kind from opposition parties’ candidates but vote for us came to light, the Election Commission reprimanded him for this statement.
Besides the blatant misuse of money, alleged electoral roll manipulations were also witnessed in the Delhi election as had happened in Maharashtra elections. According to The Quint investigation, between the 2020 Assembly elections and the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Delhi added 4,16,648 new voters. That’s expected over four years. But then, in just seven months, another 3,99,362 voters were added to the rolls. It’s a staggering jump, raising questions – was this genuine increase, or was something else at play?
The AAP has been outspoken in its criticism of purported voter register manipulation, asserting that BJP disproportionately profited from additions and deletions. Even a slight change in the number of voters can have a significant impact in hotly contested seats.
For example, In Kejriwal’s seat, the number of voters fell by 39,757 between 2020 and 2024, but then slightly increased by 2,209 in 2025. Overall, there has been a 27.2% drop, which means that one in four 2020 voters was no longer on the list.
In Maharashtra too inexplicably, 39 lakh voters – the entire population of Himachal Pradesh – were added to the lists in-between the state assembly and Lok Sabha elections.
These alleged malpractices have seemed to become the norm for the ruling party to win elections but it would certainly harm the credibility of the election process.