In Delhi East, Gautam Gambhir rides Narendra Modi wave, leads Arvinder Singh Lovely; Atishi trails in third position

BJP candidate and former Indian cricketer Gautam Gambhir has taken a major lead over his nearest competitor Arvinder Singh Lovely of the Congress. Gambhir was sitting pretty with 98,870 votes at 11.30 am, Lovely had 48,881. The much-discussed Atishi of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is a poor third with 34,435 votes at 11.30 am.

At the fag-end of her campaign, Atishi had held a press conference and accused Gambhir of distributing pamphlets with derogatory language against her. That line of attack against Gambhir is apparently not working.

Delhi East is a BJP stronghold. As long back as in 1967, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh had won the constituency in the first election held to the seat. The total number of voters in the constituency is approximately 16 lakh. In 2014, the BJP's Mahesh Girri won from here with 5,72,202 votes. Interestingly, the most popular leader from the region has been BJP's Lal Bihari Tiwari.