MCD Eection Results 2017: Counting of votes in Delhi will begin at 8am.
Counting of votes will take place today for Delhi's three municipal corporations - North, East and South - which went to polls on Sunday. The verdict will be a litmus test for Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal as it will show whether Delhi has turned away from the 48-year-old leader's Aam Aadmi Party or AAP. The counting of votes will begin at 8 am.
The high-stake civic polls were held on April 23 in Delhi's three municipal corporations with a voter turnout of 53.58 per cent, a shade higher than the 2012 elections. The 2012 civic polls was the first election after the trifurcation of the MCD into the North, South and East, the same year.
"We are all working as per the schedule. All the EVMs have been deposited with due seal and counting will begin at 8 am. There are 35 counting centres and we are all geared up," Delhi State Election Commissioner SK Srivastava said.
The key parties - AAP, BJP and Congress - had vigorously campaigned ahead of the polls and all of them are expecting a favourable mandate. However, the exit polls have predicted "landslide victory" for the BJP, which has dominated the three municipal corporations for a decade.
The result will also determine whether the sway of Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP, which had stunned all by bagging 67 seats out of 70 in the 2015 Delhi Assembly polls, still holds and whether the party would be able to put behind its humiliating Rajouri Garden bypoll defeat.
The AAP had also badly lost in Punjab and Goa in the five-state Assembly elections that were held earlier this year. However, the AAP national convener refused to acknowledge the bye-election verdict as a "trailer of the MCD polls".
Mr Kejriwal, on Monday, warned of launching a "movement" if the MCD exit poll results, which have predicted a BJP sweep, come true.
Polling was held on Sunday in 270 of the 272 wards of the three municipal corporations. The election to two wards has been postponed because candidates died.
The BJP fielded fresh faces in in 267 wards of the total 272 wards. The Congress, which finished second in the Rajouri Garden bypoll, is hoping for a resurgence and banked on its big guns during campaigns to shore up its fortune, despite infighting. It has fielded 271 candidates.
In his last vote appeal before campaigning ended, Mr Kejriwal warned Delhi's voters that, "If you vote for the BJP then you will be responsible if you have dengue in your family." The BJP called it political arrogance, the Congress said it was a "desperate statement."
(With inputs from PTI)