Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar will launch the party campaign by addressing Purvanchalis at Burari in North Delhi, followed by a roadshow on April 8 and another rally at Badarpur on April 9 ahead of the municipal polls.
Janata Dal (United), announced candidates for 111 seats in which nominations of 10 candidates were cancelled, hence, reducing the total number of contestants to 101.
All major parties including the BJP, the Congress and the AAP are fronting their big guns in the run-up to the polls. Purvanchalis, or people hailing from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh settled in Delhi, are considered a major vote bank by all the parties. A sizeable chunk of this community is settled in “jhuggi-jhopri” and unauthorised colonies.
The party’s national general secretary and Delhi unit in-charge Sanjay Jha said that over the years a large number of people from Purvanchal have settled in the Capital and the vote share of these people have also gone up significantly but neither the BJP nor the AAP has done anything for these people.
“Now people understand that their voices will be listen by their own leader and this time the party is receiving overwhelming support from every section of society,” he added.
He asserted that the people of Delhi will support JD (U) based on what the party has done in Bihar. “The 153 sitting councillors of the BJP are not fielded because they have failed to address the civic issues in the last five years. The party has decided to go with new faces in a move to avoid anti-incumbency. The focus is certainly shifted to Nitish Kumar’s “good governance model”, which is going be a benchmark for the entire country," a senior party leader said.
The BJP has been ruling the MCD since 2007. The last polls were held in 2012.The much-awaited polls will decide the fate of 272 councillors. While NDMC and SMDC have 104 seats each, EDMC has 64 seats.
The total number of electorate for the civic polls stands at 1,32,10,206, which has 73,15,915 men, 58,93,418 women and 793 voters in the other category, according to the State Election Commission.