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EC announces dates for Delhi assembly elections
Election notification will be issued on January 14, last day of nominations is January 21, scrutiny of nominations will take place on January 22, last date for withdrawal of candidature is January 24, and date of polling is February 8.
The Election Commission of India (EC) on Monday announced elections in Delhi, where the ruling AAP, BJP and Congress will fight it out for the 70 seats, will be held on February 8 and the votes will be counted on February 11.
“The date has been fixed after interacting all the concerned stakeholders. We have writing commitments from senior police officers to ensure law and order is controlled and made conducive for the polls,” chief electoral commissioner Sunil Arora said during a press conference.
“The model code of conduct will be implemented with immediate effect,” he said.
Arora said there are 1,46,92,136 electors in Delhi and that voting will be held at 13,750 polling stations, which will be manned by at least 90,000 personnel in the upcoming elections.
The Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had swept the last assembly polls with 67 of the 70 seats in 2015. The term of the assembly ends on February 22, 2020.
All the three parties have said they are geared up for the high-staked elections.
Gopal Rai, the AAP’s Delhi unit convener, said their campaign began weeks after the Lok Sabha results in May.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already kicked off the BJP’s campaign at the Ramlila Maidan, focusing both on national and local issues. His party had won just three seats in the last elections.
The Congress, which did not win a single seat in 2015, said its campaign will be focused on the work done by the party in the past and what it intends to do in the future. It did not win a single seat in 2015.
This will be the first elections in Delhi after the BJP recorded a massive mandate in the Lok Sabha polls last year and swept all the seven parliamentary seats in the Capital.
This will also be the first polls since the BJP lost in Jharkhand—the second state that slipped out of its grip—in December last year. The opposition alliance led by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) won the polls in the eastern state.
