The national Capital is all set to elect its Councilors on Sunday. As many as 272 wards across three MCDs — East MCD with 64 wards, North MCD with 104 wards, and South MCD with 104 wards — will go to the polls. In a triangular high-octane contest, the political ramifications of which will go much beyond the city’s borders. The verdict will reshape the political equations in the country’s power capital.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), after unprecedented victory in Assembly elections in 2015, is gearing for another round of battle in Capital city. The party, with claims to make revolutionary changes in education, health, power, water and various other sectors in its two years’ rule in Delhi Government, is seeking vote to bring similar reforms in Corporations. Stressing need to work more in sectors like education, health, road transport, water, electricity, etc with an integrated system to make the city a “world class”, the party is emphasising ruling of one party in both the State and the Corporations. The civic elections are also being seen as a popularity test for the party Convener and Delhi.
The run-up to the polls has also been dominated by allegations of tampered EVMs, made by Kejriwal, a charge rejected by the Election Commission.
For the Bahartiya Janta Party (BJP), holding on to power fighting a decade-long anti incumbency is a challenge and an opportunity to blunt Kejriwal’s attempts to emerge as the principal adversary to the BJP has changed all its 272 candidates to ward of anti-incumbency. The thumping victory in recently held Assembly elections especially in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand has given an impetus to the BJP. The crushing defeat of AAP candidate in the Rajouri Garden Assembly seat bypoll came as a shot in the arm for the party. Delhi State president Manoj Tiwari sounded confident when asked about the chances of his party. “We are going to win all the three municipal corporations and what remains to be seen is who comes second and third”.
The Congress, which has considerably increased its vote share in polls held after 2015 where it was reduced to zero, is hoping to gain its lost ground and make its presence felt, despite unabated infighting.
Addressing the booth-level workers, BJP chief Amit Shah had said a favourable verdict could be a stepping stone to victory in the next Assembly election in the city.
The Generation-1 electronic voting machines (EVMs) are to be used for the MCD elections, which the Commission has described as “foolproof”.
The State Election Commission is gearing up to carry out the electoral exercise that will be spread over 13,000 booths spanning 272 wards.
Over 1.3 crore people are eligible to vote in the polls and of them more than 1.1 lakh are first-time voters. Out of the 13,022 polling stations, police authorities have declared 3,284 as sensitive and 1,464 as hypersensitive.
For the first time in MCD elections, None Of The Above (NOTA) option will be available.
The total number of electorate for the civic polls stands at 1,32,10,206 which include 73,15,915 men, 58,93,418 women and 793 voters in the other category.
This would be the first civic poll after the latest delimitation which has redrawn the civic wards.
As per the new delimitation exercise, based on the 2011 Census, each ward now has an average of 60,000 people with an estimated 40,000 voters.
Delhi has 70 Assembly seats and before the delimitation, every constituency had four wards, but, now it ranges from 3- 7.
The erstwhile unified Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) was trifurcated in 2012 into North, South and East Municipal Corporations. While NDMC and SDMC have 104 wards each, EDMC has 64.