Delhi recorded a voter turnout of 50.48% in the high-stakes Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) polls held on Sunday, December 4, the results of which may have ramifications beyond the national capital. Voting for the election to the 250 wards took place on Sunday, with a spirited Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), a confident Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and a hopeful Congress locked in a triangular contest. The maximum polling was registered in Bakhtawarpur ward, the State Election Commission said on Monday, December 5.
Both the AAP and the BJP have exuded confidence that they will emerge victorious in the polls while the Congress is seeking to regain lost turf. In the 2017 civic election, the BJP won 181 of the 270 wards. Polling could not be held on two seats due to the death of candidates. The AAP had won 48 wards and the Congress 27. The voting percentage that year was around 53%.
The highest polling (65.72%) in the 2022 MCD polls was recorded in ward no. 5 (Bakhtawarpur), while the lowest voting percentage (33.74%) was registered in ward no.145 (Andrews Ganj). Barring a few stray incidents of MCC (model code of conduct) violations and "a couple of other scattered incidents of impersonation", the polling remained peaceful throughout the day and no untoward incident of any kind was reported from anywhere, the SEC said in a statement on Sunday night.
There are 250 wards in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and 1,349 candidates are in the fray in this election. Votes will be counted on December 7. This is the first civic election after the fresh delimitation exercise, and the poll was held days after the first phase of the Gujarat assembly elections, and a day ahead of its second phase. Authorities had set up 13,638 polling stations across Delhi for the exercise.
This was also the first civic polls 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, were identified in critical or sensitive categories.
There were 272 wards in Delhi and three corporations — NDMC, SDMC and EDMC — in Delhi between 2012 and 2022, before being reunified into an MCD that formally came into existence on May 22. The erstwhile MCD, established in 1958, was trifurcated in 2012 during Sheila Dikshit's tenure as the chief minister.