Nominations for high-stakes Delhi polls set to kick off

Nominations for the high-stakes Delhi elections will begin on Tuesday as the Election Commission is set to issue the notification for the February 8 polls on the same day.

Elections to the 70-member Delhi Assembly promises to be a triangular contest with the AAP hoping to retain power on the plank of development and the BJP and the Congress determined to put up a spirited challenge.

The counting of votes will be taken up on February 11.

"The nomination process will start from tomorrow at the returning officers of 70 Assembly constituencies. The timing shall be 11 AM to 3 PM," a senior official of the Delhi CEO Office said.

The last date to file nomination is January 21, the scrutiny will happen on January 22 while the last date of withdrawal of candidature will be January 24.

Over 1.46 crore voters are eligible to exercise their franchise in the February 8 Assembly election in Delhi, according to the final electoral roll published on Monday.

Delhi Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Ranbir Singh had earlier said that there were a total of 1,46,92,136 voters -- 80,55,686 males, 66,35,635 females and 815 belonging to third gender -- in the final voters list.

According to data shared by the Delhi CEO Office, 673 candidates had fought the 2015 Delhi polls.

The ruling AAP will face the Delhi election next month with the hope to repeat its stellar performance in the last assembly polls, while the BJP, which bagged all seven seats here in the Lok Sabha election, will be aiming at expanding its vote share in the national capital.

The Aam Aadmi Party had got 54.3 per cent votes in the 2015 Assembly polls, while the Bharatiya Janata Party got a vote share of 32 per cent and the Congress managed to bag just 9.6 per cent of the total votes polled.

The AAP will fight the polls on a depleted strength of 60 MLAs as it had to concede one seat to the BJP in the subsequent bypoll, while six of the lawmakers were disqualified over joining other parties.

However, in the 2019 parliamentary polls, the BJP led the show, sweeping all seven seats.

The saffron party had amassed a whopping 55 per cent vote share, leaving the Congress on the second spot with 22.50 per cent votes and the AAP at a dismal low of 18.10 per cent votes.

In 2019, the AAP won only one seat of the over 40 it contested across nine states and Union territories and its vote share in the national capital was the highest in the country.

The AAP had fielded candidates in Delhi, Chandigarh, Bihar, Goa, Punjab, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Haryana, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh, but only Bhagwant Mann of the party came up trumps from Sangrur in Punjab.