New Delhi: Voting for the high-stakes Delhi Assembly election on Saturday saw a meagre 16.4% voter turnout after three hours of polling at 11 am.
The Delhi election campaign, which ended Thursday evening, saw the BJP aggressively raising the anti-CAA protests at Shaheen Bagh as a poll issue, and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) hard-selling development as its electoral plank.
The vitriol with which politicians attacked one another drowned out serious debate in the run-up to voting. Meanwhile, the Congress was conspicuous by its near absence during the campaign.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP is going into the election with the tough task of matching its 2015 tally, when it won 67 of 70 seats in an unprecedented sweep.
Kejriwal has fronted his campaign with his work on fixing the city’s hospitals and schools and promising a host of new welfare measures. After casting his vote in the morning, Kejriwal made a special appeal to women to cast their votes.
On the other hand, the BJP is determined to unseat Kejriwal and hopes to build on its performance in the 2019 parliamentary polls when it won all seven Lok Sabha seats. The party, which has not yet named a contender for the CM’s post, has called Kejriwal a “terrorist” who makes false promises and sides with “anti-national” elements.
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