With the announcement of election schedule on Friday, bugle for the civic election of national importance has been officially sounded. The three major contenders Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Congress have started working on their strategies and candidate selection for the polls to the 250 wards of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.
All three major parties have buckled up for a great showdown. While the BJP, which has been in power in Delhi’s three civic bodies (now unified) for 15 years, is eyeing a fourth term, AAP has centered its campaign around the BJP’s alleged misrule, which led to the creation of the three landfills. For Congress, the civic poll is an opportunity to make a comeback after staying away from power for a long time.
Voting for the much-awaited MCD election will be held on December 4 and the counting of votes will take place on December 7.
Selection process
The process to select candidates for the high-stakes battle has been unveiled. The incumbent saffron party is unlikely to retain a majority of its outgoing councillors this election. Party leaders suggest that more than 60 per cent of the challenge will be put up by new faces from the party.
Jai Prakash, former mayor of the erstwhile North Municipal Corporation of Delhi (NMCD), said the factor behind this is the new mechanism in allocation of a ward, in which, over 50 per cent of the total seats have been reserved for women and candidates of SC/ST categories. “Besides, many of them didn’t have a good reputation among the public, so the party has decided to replace them with fresh candidates,” he said. Meanwhile, Delhi Congress has already received over 1,000 applications from likely candidates seeking party tickets for the polls. The party leaders said a marathon meeting will to streamline the candidate selection process will take place in coming days.
The AAP has formulated a rather interesting mechanism for the selection of its candidates. For this, leaders said that the AAP has roped in independent agencies to conduct surveys across the city’s 250 municipal wards.
MLA Somnath Bharti elaborated on the multi-layered process devised for the selection of candidates. “First, the names (candidates) were suggested by the organisation after seeking consensus from the respective assembly members. Then independent agencies were asked to assess the winnability of those candidates. Now, after the survey is done, an internal poll will be done to check the popularity of the candidates in their wards. The party workers will take part in that poll. Whoever will get the most votes will be asked to go into poll fray from the respective ward,” the MLA said.
This time, the AAP’s surveys are slated to be completed by November 10, the MLA said. According to the poll schedule from the State Election Commission (SEC), the notification for nominations will be issued on Monday and the candidates will be able to file their papers by November 14. The scrutiny of nominations will start from November 16 and the last date to withdraw the name from fighting the poll is November 19.
Poll promises
After nominations, parties will come out with their election manifestos The BJP will reach out to common people for suggestions on making its election manifesto, the Sankalp Patra. NDMC vice-chairm Satish Upadhyay – who is convener for the party manifesto committee – said the party has launched a website and a WhatsApp hotline seeking suggestions from the public for the upcoming corporation elections. Besides, suggestion boxes will be put up at 1,000 spots across the city and on the party’s campaign vehicles.
“We will compile them and come out with a manifesto after nominations of our candidates are done,” Prakash said. Satish Upadhyay, the chairperson of BJP’s manifesto committee. “The legacy dump at garbage mountains have been one of the biggest issues but we have successfully managed to deal with it and expect to flatten them by 2024, which will be on the top priority of our manifesto,” he said.
Meanwhile, the AAP will focus on two things in its manifesto which party leaders expect to be released by November 17. “Our targets are cleanliness and environment protection. The focus will be on solid waste management and rainwater harvesting since both of the components have been in shambles during the consecutive tenures of BJP,” Somnath Bharti said.
Street campaign
Meanwhile, high-decibel election campaigns are being run in the city’s by all major political parties.
The BJP has launched the ‘Har Ghar Sampark’ campaign which would be run under the leadership of state party president Adesh Gupta. With the new campaign, Delhi BJP will look to connect Delhi’s voters with the BJP’s ideology. The party has planned to inform voters about its successful initiatives during the three tenures and alleged failure of the AAP government in supporting the MCD in various development works.
The party chief said, “The Delhi government is continuously doing hollow propaganda and cheating the people of Delhi. We are doing this campaign to show Delhiites AAP’s truth.” Meanwhile, the AAP will be aggressively propagating the alleged mismanagement by BJP in managing the garbage menace in the city. The primary game plan of the AAP is to surround the BJP on the issue of landfills. For this, the party will capitalise on the popularity of Kejriwal during the campaign, AAP sources said. They said the cadre will hit the streets with the campaign slogan ‘MCD mein bhi Kejriwal’.
The party seems to be betting on its 2017 game plan. Five years ago, when the three erstwhile civic bodies went to the polls, AAP had centred its campaign around cleaning Delhi and attacking the BJP over the landfills. Delhi has already seen a high-voltage campaign by AAP and BJP leaders over the last month. Two senior BJP leaders party chief J P Nadda and Union Home Minister Amit Shah attended events here in October where they took on the Delhi government.
This election, the SEC has reserved 50 per cent of seats for women candidates. Following a Union Home Ministry notification, the total number of MCD wards in Delhi has been reduced to 250 from the earlier 272. A total of 42 wards of these are reserved categories.
The BJP has ruled the erstwhile three municipal corporations (NDMC, SDMC and EDMC) for over 15 years. This year, the central government unified the three corporations into MCD. Besides, the expenditure ceiling has been fixed at Rs 8 lakh meaning a candidate cannot expend more than Rs 8 lakh in election campaigning, which is over Rs 2 lakh more than the limit ordered in the previous civic polls in 2017.
In the last MCD elections, candidates had the election expense limit capped at Rs 5.75 lakh. A government official said that the expenditure limit was increased to Rs 8 lakh in March this year in anticipation of the civic polls that were scheduled to be held in April.
The elections were later delayed as the Central government announced its intentions to unify the three erstwhile municipal corporations of Delhi. “The expenditure limit is raised periodically based on inflation,” the official said.
MCD election schedule 2022
Elections announced: Nov 4
Voting day: Dec 4
Counting of votes: Dec 7
Issue of Notification: Nov 7
Last day of nomination: Nov 14
Scrutiny of nomination: Nov 16
Last day of withdrawal: Nov 19
Polling: Dec 4
Counting/Results: Dec 7
Timing of polling:
8.30 AM to 5 PM
The schedule for the election to Delhi’s unified civic body is out. It needs to be seen whether a buoyant AAP can turn its fortunes around. Meanwhile, it is a litmus test for BJP which is eyeing the 4th term. Ashish Srivastava reports
