Polling gets underway in Delhi amid tight security

New Delhi, Nov.29 : Polling has begun in national capital Delhi amidst tight security for electing representatives to the new assembly.

Elections are being held in 69 of the 70 Assembly seats. Polls in the Rajendra Nagar Assembly constituency has been rescheduled following the death of the BJP candidate, Puran Chand Yogi. It will be held on December 13.

Voters of Delhi will determine the fate of 863 candidates. The highest number of candidates is 25 in the New Delhi constituency and the lowest is three in the Ghonda constituency. Eighty three women are contesting the polls in the national capital, ten of them from the New Delhi constituency.

The elections will decide whether the Sheila Dikshit-led Congress Government will be allowed to serve a record third five-year term in Delhi. Dikshit is contesting the election from the New Delhi constituency where she is facing, among others, Vijay Jolly of the BJP.

The BJP, it is going to the polls seeking to wrest power from the Congress under the leadership of its Chief Ministerial candidate Vijay Kumar Malhotra who is fighting from Greater Kailash.

The Congress and the BSP have fielded candidates for all 69 assembly seats, while the BJP has decided to field 68 candidates. The party has shared four seats with Shiromani Akali Dal, whose three candidates would be contesting on the BJP symbol and one from Rajouri Garden on their own.

The Nationalist Congress Party is contesting 15 seats, the Rashtriya Janata Dal 11, the Communist Party of India five and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) four. There are also 352 independent candidates in the fray.

Polling will be held from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and the counting of votes will take place on December 8. Counting for the Rajendra Nagar seat will be held on December 15.

Delhi's Chief Electoral Officer Satbir Silas Bedi told reporters on Friday 58.8 lakh voters are male and 47 lakh females. The average number of electors per constituency is about 1.53 lakh.

There are 10,676 main polling stations and 316 auxiliary polling stations with an average of 963 voters each. Of these polling stations, 752 are "sensitive" and 368 "hyper-sensitive," Bedi said.

For the polling, 72,801 officers have been deployed on electoral duty, and of them, 55,412 would be utilised for formation of polling teams, 5,803 for deployment at voter assistance booths, 1,138 for deployment as micro-observers, 1,230 for appointment as sector officers and 9,218 would be kept on reserved, Bedi said.

Over 51,000 police personnel will be on duty, of whom 33,134 will be from the Delhi police, 9,000 home guards from Haryana, 5,000 home guards from UP and 4,000 home guards from Delhi.

Bedi said 13,390 electronic voting machines will be in use during the polls.

ANI