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New Delhi. Votes will be cast for all the 250 wards of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi today. In this election, there is a triangular contest between the Aam Aadmi Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress. For this, polling will start at 8 in the morning and will continue till 5.30 in the evening and with the counting of votes on December 7, it will be clear whether BJP’s rule in Delhi Municipal Corporation remains intact or this time AAP and Congress will reverse here.
Over 1.45 crore voters are eligible to exercise their franchise in the MCD elections, which will decide the fate of a total of 1,349 candidates. According to the data shared by the State Election Commission officials, the total number of voters in Delhi is 1,45,05,358, of which 78,93,418 are male, 66,10,879 are female and 1,061 are transgender.
This is the first election after the exercise of consolidation and the formation of a unified MCD by merging the municipal corporations of North, South and East Delhi. The integrated MCD has come into existence from 22 May. The voting to be held on Sunday is three days after the first phase of polling for the Gujarat Assembly elections and a day before the second phase of polling.
MCD was established in 1958. In 2012, during the tenure of the then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, it was divided into three parts – North, South and East Delhi Municipal Corporations. However, this year again all the three were integrated.
Both the AAP and the BJP have expressed confidence that they will emerge victorious in the elections, while the Congress is trying to regain lost ground. Before the elections, big leaders of AAP and BJP campaigned in Delhi and roamed the streets asking for votes for their party’s candidates.
State Election Commission officials said that the Returning Officer and his team are fully prepared for the polling to be held on Sunday and adequate arrangements have been made for the deployment of security forces. The commission said on Friday that it has made complete arrangements for smooth voting.
This is the first election of the Municipal Corporation after the February 2020 riots in Delhi and according to the data shared by the officials, 3360 booths at 493 places have been declared sensitive. About 40,000 police personnel, 20,000 home guards and 108 companies of paramilitary and state armed police forces will be deployed for the smooth conduct of the MCD elections, a senior police official said. Election officials said that 68 polling stations have been made model polling stations, while 68 have been made ‘pink’ polling stations.
In the civic elections held in the year 2017, BJP had won 181 out of total 270 wards. Voting could not be held on two seats due to the death of the candidates. AAP had won in 48 and Congress in 27 wards. In 2017, there was 53 per cent polling.
