A voter turnout of 33.3% was recorded till 1 pm in the Delhi Assembly polls on Wednesday, according to data from the Election Commission.
While the North East district in the national capital recorded the highest turnout at 39.5% as of 1 pm, the Central Delhi district saw the lowest at 29.7%.
Voting in the national capital began at 7 am and will end at 6 pm. There are 699 candidates in the fray.
Polling is taking place in a single phase across 13,766 polling stations set up at 2,696 locations for over 1.5 crore eligible voters to cast their ballot. The votes will be counted on Saturday.
The <a class="link-external" href="https://aninews.in/news/national/general-news/voting-begins-for-delhi-assembly-elections-amid-tight-security20250205071811/” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>Election Commission has deployed 220 companies of the Central Armed Police Forces, 35,626 personnel from the Delhi Police and 19,000 Home Guards to ensure peaceful polling, ANI reported.
About 3,000 polling booths have also been identified as sensitive, where special security arrangements, including drone surveillance, have been made.
The national capital is witnessing a three-way contest between the Aam Aadmi Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress.
Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal is contesting against the BJP’s Parvesh Verma and Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit from the New Delhi Assembly constituency.
Chief Minister Atishi is fighting against BJP candidate Ramesh Bidhuri and the Congress’ Alka Lamba in Kalkaji.
The Jangpura seat is seeing a contest between AAP leader Manish Sisodia, BJP candidate Tarvinder Singh Marwah and the Congress’ Farhad Suri.
Key contenders for the Greater Kailash seat are AAP leader and Delhi minister Saurabh Bhardwaj, the BJP’s Shikha Rai and Garvit Singhvi of the Congress.
Delhi had recorded a voter turnout of 62.5% in the 2020 polls and 56% in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
In 2020, the Aam Aadmi Party won 62 of 70 seats in the Assembly. The BJP won the remaining eight seats.
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Milkipur, Erode East bye-polls
Polling was also underway for the Assembly bye-elections in Uttar Pradesh’s Milkipur seat and the Erode East constituency in Tamil Nadu.
The counting of votes will also take place on Saturday.
In Milkipur, the bye-poll was necessitated after Samajwadi Party’s Awadhesh Prasad resigned as the MLA after being elected to the Lok Sabha in June. His son is the party’s candidate from the constituency.
At 1 pm, a voter turnout of 44.5% was recorded, as per Election Commission data.
In Erode East, the bye-poll was necessitated due to the death of Congress MLA EVKS Elangovan on December 14. The polls have been boycotted by the state’s Opposition All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the BJP.
A voter turnout of 42.4% was recorded at 1 pm.
FIR against Kejriwal
Hours ahead of the Assembly polls in Delhi, another first information report was filed against Kejriwal in Haryana’s Kurukshetra for his claims that the state was poisoning water from the Yamuna river being supplied to the national capital, India Today reported.
The case was registered based on a complaint by a resident of Haryana’s Shahbad, The Indian Express reported.
The Aam Aadmi Party chief has been booked under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to promoting enmity, spreading false information that could harm India’s unity, making false charges against someone and deliberately insulting religious beliefs.
In January, the BJP government in Haryana also said it had filed an FIR against Kejriwal for his claims
On January 27, Kejriwal shared a video on social media of Delhi Chief Minister Atishi alleging a conspiracy by the BJP to poison the drinking water in Delhi.
On the next day, Atishi backed the AAP convenor’s claims by citing a purported letter from the chief executive officer of the Delhi Jal Board, which highlighted that while Delhi’s water treatment plants were designed to handle up to 1 parts per million of ammonia, the levels in the Yamuna water far exceeded the permissible limits.
FIR against AAP MLA for alleged poll code violation
The Delhi Police on Wednesday said that an FIR had been filed against AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan for allegedly violating the Model Code of Conduct, PTI reported.
The code, which came into force on January 7 when the poll panel announced the election schedule, is a set of guidelines issued by the poll panel that candidates, political parties and the government must follow during an election. It sets guardrails for speeches, campaigning, meetings, processions, election manifestos and other aspects of the polls.
This came hours ahead of polling. Khan is the AAP candidate from Okhla.
The FIR was filed “after a video surfaced online purportedly showing him distributing stickers and election materials in the Batla House area late night on Tuesday,” PTI quoted an unidentified police officer as saying.
Campaigning for the polls ended on Monday evening.
“Based on the video and subsequent investigation, an FIR has been registered,” the officer added. Further investigation was underway.
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