PM Modi and Arvind Kejriwal will lead their parties, the BJP and the AAP.
Assembly elections will be held in Delhi on February 7 and votes will be counted on February 10, the Election Commission has said.
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The model code of conduct comes into effect immediately, the commission said. Chief Election Commissioner VS Sampath said there would be "zero tolerance on provocative speeches."
Delhi's 1.3 crore voters will vote for 70 assembly seats. The last date for nominations is January 21 and the last date for withdrawal of nominations is January 24, the commission said.
The BJP, which had won the most seats in elections held in December 2013, will not project a candidate for chief minister. "We will go into this election with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the face," the party's Delhi chief Satish Upadhyay told NDTV today.
The Aam Aadmi Party, number 2 last year in a spectacular electoral debut, has challenged the BJP to name a presumptive chief minister to match what it calls the "stature" of its chief Arvind Kejriwal, who had resigned last February after 49 days as chief minister.
Both AAP and BJP dismiss the Congress, with AAP leader Ashutosh wagering today that it would win "no seats." But the Congress, which had won a humiliating eight seats after ruling Delhi for 15 years, has said it is prepping to give its rivals a run for their money.
The Congress is expected to field former union minister Ajay Maken to head its campaign. "New faces are being projected, we are not going to give a walkover...There is no fight for second or third place. We are a party with a base in every 'mohalla', locality," Mr Maken told NDTV today.
The BJP swept all seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi in the national elections last May and hopes that success will extend to the assembly elections. Its strategy to seek votes in the name of PM Modi has paid off in multiple state elections since the national elections, the party says.
The Delhi assembly was dissolved in November last year, after all three major parties - the BJP, the Congress, and Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party - said they were not in a position to form the government.
After the capital delivered a fractured mandate in December 2013, single largest party BJP, which was a few seats short of a majority, had declined an invitation to form the government.
Arvind Kejriwal became chief minister with external support from the Congress, but resigned after 49 days in office on February 14, 2014. He later said resigning was a mistake.
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