Depending on what spin one wants to give it, the results of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) bypolls can be interpreted in a number of ways. The hard facts, though, are this: the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which held six of the 13 wards that voted on Sunday, is down to three, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has scored five on debut, while the Congress has gained lost ground with four (potentially five if the lone Independent winner returns to his former party).

It is a mixed verdict for AAP – from the high of winning 67 out of 70 seats in last year’s assembly elections, five out of 13 is a dampener, even though it is still the most number of wards won by a party. Also, AAP polled only 29.93 per cent of the total votes, nearly five per cent behind BJP’s vote share of 34.11 per cent. Also, while BJP was either the winner or runner-up in 11 wards, the corresponding figure for AAP was only eight. And while two of the three biggest margins belonged to the BJP, AAP scraped through in three of the four closest contests, two of them with three-figure victory margins.

Interestingly, one of the wards in which AAP did not poll among the top two was Ward No. 214 (Khichripur). The runner-up there was BJP’s Vinod Kumar Binny, a name which will be very familiar to those tuned into the political ups and downs of the national capital. As an independent candidate, Binny became the councillor from Khichripur in the 2012 MCD elections, only to vacate the seat in order to contest and win the 2013 Delhi assembly elections from Laxmi Nagar on an AAP ticket. After being expelled from the party on disciplinary grounds, Binny joined BJP and contested the 2015 Delhi assembly elections from Patparganj, losing to Manish Sisodia.

Bypolls in these 13 MCD wards were needed as the seats were vacated by councillors in order to contest assembly elections. While nine wards have been unrepresented since the 2013 elections, the other four have been lying vacant since 2015. In January, the Delhi High Court had rejected the Delhi government’s suggestion of advancing the MCD elections for all wards to September-October 2016 and directed the government to conduct bypolls within three months.

Interestingly, of the 13 councillors who had vacated their seats, eight have an AAP connect. While Binny has since moved on to BJP, the other seven remain with Delhi’s governing party. Four independent councillors are now AAP lawmakers – Naresh Balyan (Nawada), Mahinder Yadav (Vikas Nagar), Kartar Singh Tanwar (Bhati) and Parmila Tokas (Munirka) now represent Uttam Nagar, Vikaspuri, Chhattarpur and RK Puram, respectively.

Two councillors from parties other than BJP and Congress contested and lost on their party tickets in 2013, only to ride the AAP wave to the assembly in 2015. Sahi Ram and Imran Hussain, then councillors from Tekhand and Ballimaran, respectively, now represent Tughlakabad and Ballimaran after losing from there on a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) ticket in 2013.

Quammruddin Nagar’s Raghuvinder Shokeen quit BJP for AAP and is now the legislator from Nangloi Jat. The BJP councillors who vacated their wards but stuck to their party have not been so lucky electorally – Rajesh Gahlot (Matiala), Anil Kumar Sharma (Nanak Pura), Ram Kishan Singhal (Shalimar Bagh North) and Mahinder Nagpal (Wazirpur) all lost to AAP candidates in 2015.

While all these movements bore electoral fruit for AAP, in the long run, it can only dent the confidence of voters in a party that came into being on the premise of being unlike any existing political party. After all, how different can the party remain if it continues to absorb politicians from established parties across the spectrum? So while 13 wards is not a huge sample size, a drop from a vote share of 54.3 per cent in the 2015 assembly elections to 29.93 per cent in the MCD bypolls surely invites a chintan baithak (introspection sitting), if not chinta (worry).

The author can be contacted on Twitter @causticji