The polling for the 70-member Delhi Assembly started on Saturday morning at 8 am. The national capital is witnessing a triangular contest among the ruling Aam Aadmi Party, which won a landslide majority in the 2015 Assembly elections, the Bhartiya Janata Party and the Congress. In the last poll, the AAP had won 67 seats, the BJP 3, while the Congress couldn’t even manage open its account.
An estimated 54.24 per cent of the 1.47 crore eligible voters cast their votes in the first eight hours till 5:45 p.m.
Here is a slideshow of the best best pictures of poll day:
Over 1.47 crore people are eligible to exercise their franchise in the polls that will decide the fate of 672 candidates. There are over 81 lakh male voters, 66.80 lakh female voters, and 869 third-gender voters, Delhi Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Ranbir Singh has said.
Around 2.33 lakh voters are in the age group of 18-19, 2.04 lakh voters are senior citizens aged 80, while there are 11,608 service voters, according to officials.
Security forces have kept a tight watch across the 70 constituencies, with police and paramilitary personnel keeping an “extra vigil” in sensitive areas like Shaheen Bagh, Jamia Nagar and Seelampuri.
Prominent candidates in the fray include Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, his deputy Manish Sisodia, Atishi and Raghav Chadha of the AAP; four former mayors — Azad Singh, Yogender Chandolia, Ravinder Gupta and Khushi Ram — of the BJP; and Shivani Chopra, daughter of Delhi Congress president Subhash Chopra.