For instance the increase in BJP’s vote share was 18.6 percentage points in Ghonda, 16.9 percentage points in Karawal Nagar and 14.6 in Gokalpur, indicating that the party succeeded in consolidating Hindu votes.

The rise was less in Seelampur, mainly because percentage of Hindus in the seat is less compared to others.

It’s not just about a rise in BJP’s vote share but also polarisation within constituencies – with Hindus consolidating behind BJP and Muslims behind AAP.

We’ve already discussed Mustafabad above. Another example lies right next to it – Karawal Nagar, which the BJP won. AAP’s Durgesh Pathak got over 80 percent votes in 5 heavily Muslim-dominated polling booths, while BJP’s Mohan Singh Bisht secured over two-thirds of the votes in all the Hindu-dominated booths.

Outside of east Delhi BJP didn’t quite succeed in consolidating Hindu votes in the same manner. Consider this – BJP won 6 out of 16 seats that lie on the east of river Yamuna and only 2 out of 54 seats in the rest of Delhi.

Clearly the consolidation appears to have been far more successful on the east.

As it is East Delhi has a history of communal violence. It was the worst effected by the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom and there was communal violence in Trilokpuri in 2014 as well.