NEW DELHI: Polling for the municipal election in Delhi will be held on December 4 while the votes will be counted on December 7, State Election Commissioner Vijay Dev announced on Friday.
The Model Code of Conduct comes into force in the national capital from Friday itself, he said.
"Voting for the municipal polls in Delhi will be held on December 4 while the results will be announced on December 7.
The filing of nominations will begin from November 7 and the last date for the same is November 14," Dev said at a press conference.
He further said, "Scrutiny of nominations will be done on November 16 while the last date for withdrawal of candidature is November 19."
Candidates can submit their nominations between 11 and 3 pm while the poll time has been set between 8 am to 5:30 pm.
The entire process of election will be completed on December 15.
According to data shared by the SEC, as on today, total voters in Delhi are 1,46,73,847 -- 79,86,705 male, 66,86,081 female and 1,061 transgender.
There are a total of 250 wards in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD).
Municipal polls were slated to be held in Delhi in April this year.
They were put on hold hours before then Delhi State Election Commissioner S K Srivastava was to announce the schedule on March 8 due to the Centre's plan to reunify the three civic bodies.
The three civic bodies were reunified by the Centre in May this year and the exercise for delimitation of wards was started in July 2022.
Meanwhile, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday accused the BJP of creating mountains of garbage in Delhi during their 15-year tenure in the MCD, asserting that people will choose the AAP in the December 4 civic body polls.
"In the last 15 years, BJP has spread garbage everywhere and created mountains of garbage. On December 4, Delhiites will vote for cleanliness. They will vote to make Delhi beautiful. This time, Delhiites will choose the AAP in MCD," Kejriwal said in a tweet in Hindi.
According to officials, polls will be conducted at all polling stations using M-2 model of ECIL make EVMs.
The State Election Commission (SEC) has already made elaborate arrangements to ensure availability of adequate number of EVMs for smooth conduct of polls.
"At least one model polling station would be set up in each assembly constituency and one polling station shall be set up to be manned exclusively by women officer/officials in each constituency," a senior official said. There will be nearly 13,665 polling stations in 2022.
The number of polling stations in 2017 was 13,138.
The SEC has upgraded the status of facilities at the polling stations from the earlier concept of Basic Minimum Facility (BMF) to Assured Minimum Facility, he added.
The officials said that the maximum limit of expenditure by a candidate at an election to a ward has been fixed at Rs 8 lakh.
The reunified MCD had formally come into existence on May 22 with IAS officers Ashwani Kumar and Gyanesh Bharti assuming charge as the new civic body's special officer and commissioner, respectively.
The erstwhile MCD, established in 1958, was trifurcated in 2012 during Sheila Dikshit's tenure as the chief minister.
It was recently reunified by merging three civic bodies --- North, South and East Delhi municipal corporations or NDMC, SDMC and EDMC.