Delhi votes today in high-stake poll battle

New Delhi: The fate of 2,315 candidates will be decided by the municipal corporation polls on Sunday. The Election Commission has made elaborate arrangements for the polls to be conducted in fair, transparent and peaceful manner. For 13,000 polling stations in the city, over 70,000 employees will be deployed on election duty. People can cast their votes on these stations from 8 am to 5.30 pm.

Elections on the 272 wards of the three civic bodies — East, North and South — will be held on Sunday. A total of 2,315 candidates are in the fray for the high-voltage contest from parties including the Congress, BJP, AAP, Bahujan Samaj Party, SP, Swaraj India and JD(U), whose fate will be decided by 1,32,10,206 voters. For the first time, the electors will have an option to choose none of the above (NOTA) to exercise their franchise in the MCD polls. While from some wards over 20 candidates are contesting, on others there are just three candidates. As an elec EVM can record the names of just 16 candidates, the wards where more than 16 candidates are contesting will have two EVMs put in place.

The total number of voters in three corporations are 1,32,10,206, out of which 7,315,915 are male and 5,893,418 are female voters. The remaining 793 voters are of the others category. A total of 1,10,639 voters will be casting their franchise for the first time, out of which 24,825 voters are 18 years old. The voting will be conducted on 13,000 booths spread across the city, of which 5,170 fall in North Delhi, followed by 5,074 polling booths in south Delhi and 2,990 polling stations in East Delhi. Compared to 2012, 3,000 more booths have been added to facilitate the 2017 municipal elections. Over 70,000 employees have been deployed on election duty across the wards in the city. To monitor the elections, 72 general observers have been posted while the total number of wards have been divided in 72 parts on which magistrate level officials will be keeping surveillance.

The campaigning involving the three main players — AAP, BJP and the Congress — was intense, marked by rancour, and the verdict will reshape the political equations in the country’s power capital.

It will determine whether the sway of Kejriwal-led AAP,  which had stunned all by bagging 67 seats in the 2015 assembly polls, still holds and if the Rajouri Garden defeat was due to hostile constituency dynamics.