2,400 candidates to contest in Delhi civic polls tomorrow

2,400 candidates will vie for voters' attention in the capital tomorrow when Delhiites go out to vote for the municipal elections, an exercise tipped as a semi-final ahead of next year's Assembly polls.

The polls to the 272 wards in the three civic bodies --East, North and South -- carved out of the existing Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) will begin at 8am and ends at 5:30am. The counting of votes will take place on Tuesday.

With campaigning ending at an unusual time of 5:30am today, political parties and candidates, a large chunk of them Independents, spent a sleepless night wooing voters at the last minute.

The municipal polls is seen as crucial for Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and Congress as well as opposition BJP with leaders believing that it could be an indicator for what is in store for the Assembly polls which is 18 months away.

BJP, which has 164 councillors in the undivided MCD against Congress' 67 and BSP's 17, harps on alleged corruption by Dikshit government while Congress is targeting the saffron party on its "inefficient and corrupt" administration in MCD.

The run-up to the polls also saw some embarrassment for BJP when one of its candidates, a sitting councillor, was arrested for allegedly murdering a partyman, who was opposed to him. Councillor Madhav Prasad was granted bail yesterday.

A total of 1.12 crore eligible voters will exercise their franchise in the polls which include 42.95 lakh voters in North Delhi Municipal Corporation, 42.67 lakh voters in South Delhi corporation and 27.16 lakh voters in East Delhi corporation.

There are 104 each wards in South and North Corporations and 64 in the East, of which 138 seats are reserved for women. South has the highest number of 904 candidates followed by North (885) and East (634).

The State Election Commission has made elaborate arrangements for tomorrow's polling by deploying around 70,000 officials for conducting the polls and over 30,000 police personnel for security.

A total of 55 polling stations have been identified as hyper-sensitive while 275 have been declared as sensitive out of 11,500 polling stations.

Most of the hyper-sensitive and sensitive polling stations fall under assembly segments of Jamia Nagar, Chandni Chowk and Seelampur.

The main contenders are BJP and Congress, but smaller parties like Samajwadi Party and BSP are giving sleepless nights to them.

Though in public both the parties make claims about clean sweep in the elections, leaders in Congress and BJP are keeping their fingers crossed as the polls are nearing.

Presence of rebels and independents are also keeping both the parties on their toes as they believe that they could play spoilsport for them. The two parties have also expelled a number of leaders to send a strong message to their cadre.

As the campaign entered a hectic phase, Dikshit and her cabinet colleagues, Union Minister Ajay Maken and DPCC chief Jai Prakash Aggarwal had hit the streets.

From the BJP side, almost all Delhi leaders, including Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly VK Malhotra and Delhi BJP chief Vijender Gupta are on campaign trail.

Gupta has earned the wrath of a section of his partymen over denial of party tickets. There was also criticism from within the party about poll ticket to his wife Shobha from Rohini Central ward where she is pitted in a direct fight with Congress' Dr Monica Puri.