Strong Rooms, Counting Centres Identified, ROs Undergoing Training: Officials On MCD Polls

Preparations are underway on war footing for the upcoming civic elections in Delhi, with poll authorities having identified strong rooms and counting centres, and returning officers undergoing training ahead of the exercise, officials said on Friday. The municipal elections are slated to be held in April, however, the dates are yet to be announced. Delhi has three municipal corporations -- North, South and East Delhi municipal corporations -- and the last civic polls were held in April 2017. "Preparations for the upcoming polls in Delhi are underway, and being done on a war-scale. Strong rooms and counting centres have been identified," a senior official said. He also said that about 15,000-16,000 polling stations are expected to be set up for the civic polls here.

"In the last civic bypolls, each polling station's limit was 1,000 voters, which for this poll was decided to be kept at 1,250. However, with the improvement in Covid situation in Delhi, the limit has been revised to 1,350," the official said. Asked about Covid protocols to be followed during the polls, he said, "Tenders have been floated to engage agencies for Covid management, as also for installing CCTV cameras". Returning officers, assistant returning officers, district election officers have been notified, and training of ROs and AROs currently going on, the official said. The State Election Commission (SEC) in Delhi had recently announced de-reservation of existing wards and reservation of new wards on rotation for specified categories. While the North Delhi Municipal Corporation and the South Delhi Municipal Corporation have 104 wards each, the East Delhi Municipal Corporation has 64 wards. All three corporations are currently ruled by the BJP, the party which has also been controlling all the civic bodies since the trifurcation of the erstwhile unified Muncipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) in 2012.

In 2017 polls, the BJP had bagged 181 of 270 wards in all three civic bodies, and had managed to increase its vote share by around five per cent. The party’s vote share was 32.2 per cent in the 2015 assembly election. While the AAP had finished on second spot, the Congress was a distant third in the elections' results tally in 2017. Both ruling BJP and opposition AAP in all three civic bodies, have claimed that they would emerge victorious in the high-stake 2022 civic polls.

PTI Inputs