Voting in high-stakes Delhi MCD elections today

According to data shared by state election commission officials, the total number of voters in Delhi is 14,505,358 — 7,893,418 men, 6,610,879 women and 1,061 transpersons. A total of 1,349 candidates are in the fray, the data showed.

Over 14.5 million electors will be eligible to vote across 250 municipal wards in the national capital on Sunday, a step closer to the end of a fierce battle for control of the city’s civic body between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Polling officers at a training center on Saturday. (Sanchit Khanna/HT photo)

This is the first time since 2012, when the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, established in 1958, was trifurcated under then chief minister Sheila Dikshit, that Delhi’s citizens will vote for a unified civic body.

According to data shared by state election commission officials, the total number of voters in Delhi is 14,505,358 — 7,893,418 men, 6,610,879 women and 1,061 transpersons. A total of 1,349 candidates are in the fray, the data showed.

Municipal polls may appear less important than state or national elections but hold far more sway in the everyday life of an urban citizen. For Delhi’s residents, no agency holds more influence on their lives than MCD, which registers births, deaths and marriages, clears garbage, oversees primary education, provides health care services, maintains colony roads and runs crematoriums.

With an annual budget of ₹15,200 crore and around 150,000 employees, MCD is usually the first port of call for Delhi’s residents, and a crucial determinant of how India’s arguably most-important Union Territory functions.

Polling will be held from 8am to 5.30pm at 13,638 polling stations across Delhi, and the votes will be counted on December 7.

The announcement of the municipal elections on November 4 led to a bitter face-off between the AAP and the BJP. The BJP has ruled the three municipal corporations for the eastern, southern and northern parts of the Capital for 15 years.

While the BJP deployed several senior Union ministers to canvas the city, the AAP campaign was led by Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal.

These are the first elections since the Union government decided to dissolve Delhi’s erstwhile municipal corporations and reunify them into a single Municipal Corporation of Delhi, whittling down the number of wards from 272 to 250 in the process.

In its 10-point manifesto, the AAP, whose campaign was led by Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia, promised to flatten Delhi’s landfills, clean up the garbage mess, weed out corruption, improve municipal hospitals and schools, and cut the number of community dogs by encouraging people to adopt strays.

On the last day of campaigning, the AAP on Friday attacked the BJP, saying people do not want a “corrupt” party like it to come to power in the civic body.

“The people of Delhi do not want a corrupt party like the BJP in the MCD (Municipal Corporation of Delhi), but want an honest party, that’s why people are demanding the Kejriwal Model in the MCD,” the AAP said in a statement on Friday, even as Kejriwal, Sisodia, Delhi AAP convenor Gopal Rai, Rajya Sabha MP Sushil Gupta, ministers Kailash Gahlot and Raaj Kumar Anand, Punjab Minister Sardar Harjot Bains, AAP leader Mahabal Mishra and MLA Durgesh Pathak led roadshows in the city’s in the party’s last push for the campaign.

The BJP, which in turn brought senior leaders including Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar, his Uttarakhand counterpart Pushkar Singh Dhami, Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan, and party president JP Nadda to campaign for its candidates, has pledged to bring all civic services under one cellphone app, apart from guaranteeing a “clean, green Delhi” with no landfills.

Addressing a roadshow in the city, Union minister Piyush Goyal targeted the Kejriwal government over allegations of corruption.

“The AAP government in Delhi has proved to be a complete failure when it comes to discharging responsibilities, and that is the reason why the BJP is getting the love and support of the people of the city,” he said. “Together, Kejriwal and his ministers have crossed the pinnacle of corruption and tarnished the image of India not only in the country but also abroad.”

The Congress, which ruled Delhi for 15 years but has faded away since its loss in 2013, is seeking to regain lost turf.

According to a report by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), a few days ahead of the polls, the BJP has the highest number of millionaire candidates in the fray, followed by the AAP and the Congress.

Air pollution in Delhi and surround areas, which has become a major civic and health issue, was a major poll plank during the campaign.

Among other key issues was sanitation, roads and waterlogging, parking, revitalizing public spaces, and finances and corruption.

The last has been adding to the political tussle in the city, with AAP’s Satyendar Jain, the city’s former health minister, in jail over allegations of money laundering, and deputy CM Sisodia being a key accused in the probe against Delhi government’s now-scrapped excise policy.

The election commission on Friday said that it has made elaborate arrangement for safe and peaceful voting operations on Sunday.

This is also the first civic polls being held in the national capital after the February 2020 riots in Delhi, and according to data shared by officials, 3,360 booths, spanning 493 locations, have been identified in critical or sensitive categories.

For the MCD polls, “nearly 40,000 Delhi Police personnel, about 20,000 home guards and 108 companies of CAPF and SAP are to be deployed”, a senior police official said.

Sixty-eight model polling stations and as many pink polling stations covering all eleven assembly segments, have been established for quality experience of voters, poll officials said.

In the last civic elections held in 2017, the BJP won 181 of the 270 wards. Polling was cancelled on two seats due to death of candidates. The AAP won 48 wards and the Congress 27.

In 2017 civic polls, the voting percentage was about 53.