New Delhi, December 4
Around 50 per cent voting was recorded on Sunday in the election to the 250 municipal
wards in Delhi, with main rivals BJP and AAP claiming victory in the high-stakes contest.
No major problems with the electronic voting machines were reported, and the voting went
smoothly. High security was kept at the 3,360 critical booths in 493 locations, where more
than 25,000 police officers, nearly 13,000 home guards, and 100 companies of paramilitary
forces were stationed, officials said.
Several people in North-East Delhi and other places said that their names weren't on the
lists of people who could vote. Anil Kumar, who is the head of the Delhi Congress, was one
of the people who couldn't vote. The BJP said that it had complained about the missing
names to the state election commission.
Election officials said that almost 50% of people had voted by the time voting ended at 5:30
pm. But the number is likely to go up because a lot of people who showed up before 5:30
p.m. and waited in line to vote are still voting.
On December 7, the results will be made public.
One of the biggest issues in the fight between Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and
the BJP, which has been in charge of municipal bodies for 15 years, is garbage collection
and landfills.
The elections are important for the AAP and its leader, Arvind Kejriwal, because they want to
grow the party before the general elections in 2024.
If AAP wins the MCD elections, it will not only solidify its position in Delhi, but it will also give
it more motivation to challenge the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the national
stage.
The BJP, which used its top leaders like national president JP Nadda, 19 Union ministers
like Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, and Piyush Goyal, and the chief ministers of six states in
the campaign, is also looking for redemption through a morale-boosting win.
The AAP beat the party badly in the 2020 Delhi Assembly elections, and the party only won
eight of the 70 seats.
With a united MCD led by a party mayor, the BJP can keep taking on the AAP and Kejriwal
in the politics of the national capital.
There were 1,349 people running for office, and more than 1.45 crore people were eligible to
vote.
Earlier in the day, Kejriwal asked people to vote so that the Municipal Corporation of Delhi
could be run in an honest way that gets things done.
"People should vote for the honest, effective party. "Vote for those who care about keeping
the city clean, not those who keep making problems," Kejriwal told reporters after voting at a
polling station in Civil Lines with his parents, wife, and children.
Adesh Gupta, president of the BJP in Delhi, said that the BJP is coming back to power in the
MCD for the fourth time in a row with a clear majority.
"People have voted against the Kejriwal government's scams and lies," Gupta said.
The Congress has lost every election in the national capital since 2015, whether it's for
parliament, an assembly, or a city council. They are hoping to come back from the
wilderness.
Several voters were upset when their names weren't on the list of people who could vote.
"This is the first time I've come here to vote. I checked the list and saw that my name is not
on it. The government doesn't have a clue. "I've been standing for a few hours, but no one
has come to help me," said Puneet Kumar, who is 19 years old.
Anil Kumar, who is president of the Delhi Congress, also didn't see his name on the list.
"My name isn't on either the list of voters or the list of people who shouldn't vote. "My wife
has already voted," Kumar said at an East Delhi polling place in Dallupura.
In Bawana's Katewara village, all of the polling places were empty because the people there
didn't vote because they thought the local government wasn't doing its job.
One of the people who lives in Katewara village, Krishna Vats, said that all the people in the
Nangal Thakran ward agreed to not vote at the polling stations.
"Both the city council and the government of Delhi have always ignored the people here, so
why should we vote? "Here, the main roads are broken, the drains are backed up, and the
MCD schools are in a terrible state," Vats said.
Women who went to vote were worried about cleanliness, the upkeep of parks, and the lack
of places to park.
Dr. Rehana Parveen, a general practitioner who went to a pink booth on DDU Marg to vote,
brought up the issue of collecting trash from colonies.
Shanti Bala Vaidya, who is 106 years old, was one of the first people to vote at the Deputy
Ganj polling place in the Bara Hindu Rao area.
"Since she started voting, she has never missed an election," her daughter Kamla said.
Vaidya (106) only speaks Bengali and can only understand it.
Sixty drones were used to keep law and order in the national capital's most important or
sensitive spots.
The BJP and the Aam Aadmi Party both said that the other party broke the model code of
conduct during the election.
Praveen Shankar Kapoor, a spokesman for the Delhi BJP, said that on election day, lakhs of
people got messages from Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal asking them to vote for the AAP.
The Aam Aadmi Party did not say anything right away.
Dilip Pandey, an AAP MLA, told reporters that people will punish the BJP for the 15 years it
mismanaged the city council and that Tiwari should "stop crying foul."
AAP candidate from Pushp Vihar in South Delhi Arun Nawariya alleged BJP workers
distributed money to influence voters.
The erstwhile MCD, established in 1958, was trifurcated in 2012 during Sheila Dikshit's
tenure as chief minister.
From 2012 to 2022, Delhi had 272 wards and three municipal corporations: North Delhi,
South Delhi, and East Delhi. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi, which was formed on May
22, was made up of these three government groups.
The BJP won 181 of the 270 wards in the 2017 municipal election. Two seats couldn't be
voted on because candidates for those seats had died. The AAP won 48 wards, while the
Congress only won 27. About 53% of people who could vote did so that year.
