Around 60.5% of Delhi’s 15.5 million voters exercised their franchise in Wednesday’s crucial assembly elections, marginally lower than the 2020 turnout, showed provisional data from the Election Commission of India (ECI), bringing the curtains down on an acerbic poll cycle that will decide the city’s future. To be sure, the final voting numbers are typically released a day after polling.
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Mustafabad clocked the highest turnout of the Capital’s 70 assembly segments, with 69% of the constituency in northeast Delhi casting their votes as of 11pm, showed the data. Till the time of going to print, Mehrauli was the at bottom end of the list with 53.04% turnout at 11pm, data showed.
The Election Commission of India in a statement said: “All 70 assembly constituencies of the National Capital Territory of Delhi went to polls today in a peaceful and festive atmosphere. Polling started at 7am, and will continue till 6pm… All voters in queue after formal closing hours of polling i.e 6pm are allowed to cast their vote. Statutory Form 17 C having accounts of votes polled will be provided at each of the polling stations to all authorised agents of the candidates present after conclusion of polling at polling stations itself.”
The turnout in 2020 was 62.82%, a dip from 67.57% in 2015, both elections that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) swept, winning 62 and 67 seats in the assembly respectively. The Arvind Kejriwal-led party relegated the BJP to eight and three seats in those polls.
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The overall voting figure this year was, however, higher than during the Lok Sabha elections in June last year, when 58.78% of the city’s voters cast their ballots.
Turnouts across the city were in line with historical trends – significantly higher in poorer areas and rural segments than in relatively upscale residential neighbourhoods.
For instance, voting in urban segments New Delhi (56.41%), Malviya Nagar (54%) and Greater Kailash (54.5%) trended lower than the city’s average. On the other hand, the Muslim dominated seats in North East Delhi, which saw violence and riots in 2020, and houses some of the poorest neighbourhoods in the city saw some of the highest voting with Seelampur at 68.7%, Mustafabad at 69% and Babarpur at 65.99%.
Former chief minister Kejriwal is vying for re-election from New Delhi, where he faces a contest from the BJP’s Parvesh Verma and the Congress’s Sandeep Dikshit.
Chief minister Atishi, meanwhile, is contesting from the Kalkaji seat, which had a turnout of 54.59%. She is fending off a fight from the BJP’s former MP Ramesh Bidhuri and the Congress’s Alka Lamba.
Voters chose between 699 candidates across 13,766 polling stations. The polling body went out of its way to dial up turnouts, with pick up and drop facilities, model booths, online facilities to locate polling station.
Polling picked up as the day wore on, showed ECI data. The turnout in the first two hours of polling was just 8.10%, which grew to 19.95% at 11am, 33.31% at 1pm, 46.55% at 3pm, 57.70% at 5 pm and 60.5% till 11pm. Till 11pm, the northeast district had recorded the highest voter turnout at 66.25% and southeast Delhi the lowest at 56.31%.
In the 2020 elections, the highest turnout was recorded at Ballimaran (71.58%) followed by Seelampur (71.22%) and the lowest was Delhi Cantonment (45.36%). Mustafabad that year clocked the third-highest turnout of 70.55%.
Mustafabad was one of around a dozen major neighbourhoods that were besieged during the 2020 Delhi riots that killed 53 and injured hundreds.
Four parties are vying for the seat which houses 262,642 voters – the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is fielding Mohan Singh Bisht, the sitting MLA from adjacent Karawal Nagar, the AAP Adil Ahmad Khan, a journalist-turned-politician who has been with the party since the Anna Hazare movement, the Congress Ali Mehdi, the son of popular ex-MLA Hasan Mehdi who held the seat from 2008 to 2016, and the AIMIM Tahir Hussain, who is incarcerated for his alleged role in the 2020 riots.
Karol Bagh, a commercial hub, is a Scheduled Caste-reserved seat, registered a turnout of 59.6% in 2020.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has fielded its incumbent MLA Vishesh Ravi, to take on the BJP’s Dushyant Kumar Gautam and Congress’s Rahul Dhanak.
Ravi won three successive elections in 2013, 2015 and 2020. The assembly covers areas such as Jhandewalan, Bapa Nagar, Dev Nagar, Nehru Nagar, Beadonpura and Regarpura. It also encompasses some of the major commercial hubs in Karol bagh and Paharganj.
Meanwhile, rural areas in some segments with a large population of lower-income groups from slum clusters that traditionally vote above the city average, recorded low numbers on Wednesday.
For instance, the turnout till 11pm was 54.9% in Okhla, 54.59% in Kalkaji, 53.04% in Mehrauli, 55.4% in Timarpur and 55.65% in Wazirpur.