High-stakes Delhi MC polls today
NEW DELHI: 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).
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.