50% of Delhi votes in high-stakes MCD polls

Around 50 per cent of 1.45 crore Delhiites on Sunday voted in the high-stakes municipal elections in the national capital to decide whether to retain the BJP as the ruling party in the civic body or bring in AAP while Congress is fighting for its political relevance in the capital.

The counting of votes to the corporation, which was merged earlier this April and now has 250 wards, will be held on December 7. Half of the 250 wards are reserved for women.

Of the 1.45 crore votes, 78.93 lakh are men, 66.10 lakh are women and 1,061 belong to the third gender. There are 229 voters aged 100 and above, and 2.04 lakh people aged above 80 but less than 100 years.

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The voting, which started at 8 am and lasted till 5:30 PM, sealed the fate of 1,349 candidates in the fray. While BJP and AAP have fielded candidates in all the wards, Congress has candidates in 247 seats.

According to poll officials, around 45 per cent of voters cast their votes till 4 PM. The number of voters coming out in the morning hours was not huge as the statistics showed that only 18 per cent voted till 12:30 pm followed by 30 per cent at 2:30 PM. The polling percentage for 2017 polls was 53 per cent.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was among the first to vote in the civic polls. He tweeted, "today's voting for making a neat and clean and beautiful Delhi, voting for forming a corruption free establishment at the municipal corporation."

Around 40,000 Delhi Police personnel, 20,000 home guards and 108 companies of paramilitary forces were deployed for ensuring incident-free voting.

The three municipal corporations were unified earlier this year, leading to postponement of the elections in April. In the 2017 polls, BJP won 64 out of 104 seats in North Delhi, 70 out of 104 in South Delhi and 47 out of 64 in East while AAP had 21, 16 and 12 respectively. Congress had 16, 12 and three seats respectively. Altogether, BJP won 181, AAP 49 and Congress 31.