The Delhi Legislative Assembly election was held on 4 December 2013, with the result announced on 8 December resulting in formation of the Fifth Legislative Assembly of Delhi.

The Bharatiya Janata Party won a plurality, closely followed by Aam Aadmi Party, in the latter party's first election; this resulted in a hung assembly. After the BJP refused to form a government in the hung assembly, the Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) Arvind Kejriwal became chief minister with external support from the Indian National Congress (INC).

Electoral law change This was one of the first five elections in which the Election Commission of India implemented a "None of the above" (NOTA) voting option, allowing the electorate to register a neutral to people any think vote but not to outright reject candidates. In a first, the Election Commission of India also appointed Central Awareness Observers, whose main task was to oversee voter awareness and facilitation.

Contesting parties There were 810 candidates running for office, including 224 independents.

Alliance/Party Flag Symbol LeaderSeats contestedNDABharatiya Janata PartyHarsh Vardhan6670Shiromani Akali DalSukhbir Singh Badal4Aam Aadmi Party Arvind Kejriwal 70Indian National Congress Sheila Dikshit 70 Bahujan Samaj Party Mayawati69 Janata Dal (United)Nitish Kumar 27Samajwadi PartyAkhilesh Yadav25 Lok Jan Shakti Party Ram Vilas Paswan16 Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam Vijayakant 11Nationalist Congress PartySharad Pawar 9Shiv Sena Uddhav Thackeray 9Rashtriya Lok Dal Chudhary Ajit Singh7Indian National Lok DalOm Prakash Chautala2LF Communist Party of India Sudhakar Reddy 1019 Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) LiberationDipankar Bhattacharya 4 Communist Party of India (Marxist) Prakash Karat 3 All India Forward Bloc 2 Social Democratic Party of India 1INDEPENDENTS224

Campaign The AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal called the BJP's Harsh Vardhan the "Manmohan Singh of the BJP" as incapable of stemming the "rot" in Delhi's governance. He added: "We will help the people of Delhi get rid of Congress misgovernance first, and then ensure change at the national level in the Lok Sabha polls." However, Vardhan was supported by the BJP's prime ministerial candidate in the 2014 Indian general election, Narendra Modi. The Hindustan Times suggested that the Rajnath Singh-appointed BJP Delhi leader, Vijay Goel, though organisationally competent, lost favour due to his exclusion of established regional leaders in reorganising local units. Singh was still viewed as reluctant to "change horses in mid-stream" but agreed. Modi led the charge, with other party leaders, to have Vardhan as the chief ministerial candidate and Goel himself agreed to the nomination of Vardhan. The AAP released its first electoral manifesto.

Opinion polls

Number of seats

Survey Date AAP BJP INC Others Source AAP-Cicero 30 November 2013 38-50 11-17 8-14 0-13 BJP (Internal) November 2013 5 36 11 - 18 "swing seats where the readings were too close to call" India TV-CVoter November 2013 10 29 27 4 India Today, ORG November 2013 6 36 22 4 Times Now, C-Voter November 2013 18 25 24 3 CNN-IBN, The Week and CSDS October 2013 19-25 22-28 19-25 0-2 ABP News-AC Nielsen October 2013 18 28 22 2 India TV-CVoter-Times Now September 2013 7 30 29 4 Hindustan Times-C Fore September 2013 7-12 22-27 32-37 0-4

Vote share

Survey Date AAP BJP INC Others Source AAP-Cicero 30 November 2013 36% 27% 26% 11% BJP November 2013 18% 35% 24% 23% India TV-CVoter November 2013 24% 33% 30% 13% CNN-IBN, The Week and CSDS October 2013 28% 29% 27% 16% ABP News-AC Nielsen September 2013 15% 34% 29% 22% India TV-CVoter-Times Now September 2013 16% 38% 34% 12% Hindustan Times-C Fore September 2013 20% 32% 34% 14% AAP-Cicero September 2013 32% 23% 25% 20%

Election There were 11,753 polling stations, including the presence of EVMs, while 630 identified as critical and hypercritical. There were 11.9  million eligible voters, of which 6.6  million were men and 5.3  million were women while there were 405,000 first-time voters. 32,801 Delhi Police personnel and 107 companies of central paramilitary forces were deployed to ensure a peaceful election. Polling stations opened at 8:00 am and turnout was 66%.

Voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) along with EVMs was used in 1 assembly seat in Delhi elections-New Delhi. Polling stations in Tuglaqabad, Karol Bagh, Trilokpuri and Badarpur reportedly had long waits because EVMs dysfunctioned. In Jungpura, Badli, Krishna Nagar, and Kondli constituencies, some voters complained that their names were on the electoral rolls and that they could not vote.

After voting, party leaders expressed their opinion. Kejriwal said he is confident of a positive result for his party. Vardhan claimed the BJP was "far ahead" of the INC and Aam Aadmi Party. "I can tell you very categorically that we are far ahead of Congress and the new entrant in Delhi politics. I am 100 percent confident about our victory. I think nobody can make any dent in our vote bank. If there is any contest or fight, it is between the Congress and the new entrant (for the second place)." Dikshit said she had her "fingers crossed" on the outcome, while national party leader Sonia Gandhi said from her Nirman Bhavan polling station: "We will win." At many places people with disabilities could not vote due to inaccessible polling booths.

In all over 43,000 postal ballots were received, an increase from the last election's 1,600 postal ballots. The Delhi Election Commission announced that 2,000 Central Paramilitary Force and Delhi Police personnel were at the vote-counting centers in the city on the day of the result announcement and CCTV cameras and live streaming of proceedings through webcasting, two layers of security cover have been set at all the 14 counting centers. Delhi Chief Electoral Officer Vijay Dev said: "Paramilitary force forms the inner circle of security of centers while adequate numbers of Delhi Police personnel will ensure safety from outside. Counting of votes will start from 8 AM tomorrow and during the first-hour postal ballots will be counted." The postal ballots were counted before the EVM votes.

Exit polls showed the BJP in the lead to possibly form a government on its own, followed by the AAP and the incumbent INC in third place; others, in general, were fourth with the BSP following.

Result

Notably, the INC's Chaudhary Prem Singh lost in the Ambedkar Nagar constituency, he held the seat since 1993 and had not lost a single election in 50 years; however, Ashok Kumar of the AAP won the seat. Incumbent Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit lost her New Delhi constituency seat to AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal by a margin that was much more than her total votes and winning hardly 500 votes more than the BJP's Vijender Kumar who finished third; she then submitted her resignation to Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung.

|- style="background-color:#E9E9E9; text-align:center;" ! class="unsortable"| ! Political party !! Flag !! Seats Contested !! Won !! Net changein seats || % of seats ! Votes !! Vote % !! Change in vote %

| style="text-align:left;" |Bharatiya Janata Party | | 66 || 31 || 8 || 44.3 || 2,604,100 || 33.07 || 3 |- style="background: #90EE90;" | | style="text-align:left;" |Aam Aadmi Party | | 69 || 28 || New || 40.0 || 2,322,330 || 29.49 || New |- style="background: #90EE90;" | | style="text-align:left;" |Indian National Congress | | 70 || 8 || 35 || 11.4 || 1,932,933 || 24.55 || 15

| style="text-align:left;" |Janata Dal (United) | | 27 || 1 || 1 || 1.4 || 68,818 || 0.87 || New

| style="text-align:left;" |Shiromani Akali Dal | | 4 || 1 || 1 || 1.4 || 71,757 || 1 || N/A

| style="text-align:left;" |Independents | | 225 || 1 || 0 || 1.4 || || 10 || N/A |- |- class="unsortable" style="background-color:#E9E9E9" ! colspan = 4 style="text-align:center;" |Total !! style="text-align:right;" |70 !! colspan=2 style="text-align:center;" |Voters !! 7,699,800 !! style="text-align:center;" |Turnout: 66% !!

Results by districts +DistrictSeatsBJPAAPINCOTHNorth Delhi84310Central Delhi70421North West Delhi73211West Delhi74310New Delhi62400South West Delhi76100South East Delhi73310South Delhi52300East Delhi61410Shahdara54100North East Delhi53020 Total70322882

Results by constituency