NEW DELHI, April 26 (Xinhua) -- India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept back to power Wednesday in the civic body polls in Delhi, riding high on Prime Minister Narendra Modi wave.
The BJP has retained by huge margins all the three municipal corporations in Delhi -- Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) North, MCD South and MCD East -- decimating the capital's ruling anti-corruption Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the country's main opposition Congress party.
AAP, led by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, has come second, while the Congress a distant third in the civic body elections held on Sunday.
The MCD elections are an important addition to the BJP's list of electoral victories this year in state and local polls across the country -- it won by a landslide margin the assembly polls in the northern states of Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh recently.
"I thank Delhi's voters for the BJP's win. The people of Delhi have rejected negative politics, the politics of excuses," BJP chief Amit Shah told the media, clearly crediting Modi's three years of "good governance" for the landslide win.
However, AAP has indicated that the manipulation in electronic voting machines (EVM) led to its rout in the civic polls, while Congress' Delhi chief and former Minister Ajay Maken has resigned, taking responsibility for the party's massive defeat.
"This is an EVM wave not a Modi wave. EVMs were rigged to help the BJP win the MCD elections," said AAP's Delhi Minister Gopal Rai.
Delhi's Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia added: "BJP's win was impossible without EVM tampering."
Maken, on the other hand, said he was quitting as the Congress' Delhi chief and would not hold any party post for a year. "The Congress was the day's big gainer on vote share, but I had expected that we would do better," he said.
However, the BJP was quick to hit back at AAP.
"The people of Delhi have exercised their right to recall. We are sad that the Chief Minister is threatening and cursing its (Delhi) people, we condemn that. I am happy the people of Delhi have rejected such people," said BJP's Delhi chief Manoj Tiwari.
Experts said the BJP, which has been ruling the MCD for a decade, managed to retain control by beating anti-incumbency just by adopting a better strategy, despite being reduced to just three seats in the Delhi assembly polls in 2015, while AAP has lost its sheen.
"In a strategic move the BJP eliminated anti-incumbency sentiment by fielding new faces in 267 wards of the total 272 wards. This is Modi's political mind. He used to do the same while he was the Chief Minister in the western state of Gujarat," said Prof Ajay Singh, a political analyst.
"But for AAP, the loss in the civic body polls means a political wipe-out, given that it is already reeling from humiliating losses in the assembly elections in the northern state of Punjab and Goa in the west last month. AAP's negative politics is just not working in Delhi," he added.
