Delhi MCD election live updates | Chief Minister Kejriwal urges Delhiites to vote as polling begins for 250 municipal wards

Voting will be held from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and the votes will be counted on December 7.

Over 1.45 crore electors will decide the fate of 1,349 candidates today in the first civic polls since the merger of the three erstwhile municipal corporations — North, South and East — in May, and after the total number of municipal wards were reduced to 250 from the previous total of 272..

The high-stakes poll is largely being perceived as a two-way contest between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), while the Congress looks to throw a surprise or two.

The run-up to the polls witnessed large-scale aggressive campaigns which included numerous roadshows and nukkad sabhas by both AAP as well as the BJP, which concluded on Sunday.

The BJP consistently deployed big names from its national and State leadership – the likes of party national president J.P. Nadda and Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma – to levy allegations of corruption, paired with theatrics, against AAP.

AAP has maintained its stance of being “ kattar imandaar” (honest to the core) and mounted its campaign on civic issues revolving around waste management, the city’s three landfills and the MCD’s poor finances that they claim were largely ignored by the BJP during the latter’s 15-year term in the civic body.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday urged people in the city to exercise their franchise for setting up an honest and performing establishment in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD).

“Today is voting for making a neat and clean and beautiful Delhi, voting for forming a corruption free government (establishment) at the municipal corporation.I appeal all the Delhi citizen to do go for voting to form an honest and performing government at the MCD,” Mr. Kejriwal tweeted in Hindi.