As the polling for the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) is underway on Sunday, April 23, many top leaders came out to cast their votes. Here are 5 things that happened in the run-up to the crucial civic body polls:
Hashtag Wars missing in Delhi MCD poll: #CongressWinningMCD trends, as BJP and AAP remain silent
- Poster wars: Ahead of the Delhi civic polls in which the BJP, AAP and the Congress are pitted against each other, the BJP adopted a move that was once taken up by the AAP to criticise the BJP. The saffron party had put up a hoarding outside its Delhi office which featured pictures of leaders from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) with the caption: "MCD ki baagdor inko? (Do you want to give the MCD's responsibility to them?)." The AAP leaders featuring in the hoarding had cases of sexual assault, land-grabbing, money laundering and others registered against them. Tajinder Bagga, the spokesperson of Delhi BJP said though the poster was not in response to the hoarding put up by AAP that said 'MCD ki baagdor kisko? Kejriwal ya Vijendra Gupta', he added that the BJP put up the poster in order to showcase the true colours of the AAP leaders.
- Hashtag wars: While the BJP had taken a leaf out of the AAP's book to humiliate them, the AAP seems to be at par with the BJP. AAP supporters on Twitter used the hashtag '#Jhaaduman' which was coined by the BJP to humiliate Kejriwal, to hit back. The AAP hailed ''Jhaaduman' who would cleanse Delhi's garbage and corruptions and also abolish house tax.
- Switching camps: While Arvinder Singh Lovely, the former Congress chief in Delhi, quit the party to join the BJP, it came as a great blow to Congress which already stood a slim chance of winning the MCD. A few days later, Barkha Shukla Singh, who used to be who was Congress' Delhi women wing chief but had been expelled from the party, joined the BJP. She also hailed the policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
- Kejriwal's fight on EVM: Kejriwal and his party moved the Delhi High Court seeking direction to the Election Commission (EC) to allow the usage of voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) machines attached to the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in the MCD polls after they accused the BJP of tampering the EVMs in the recently held Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. However, the EC had made it clear that EVMs would be used in the MCD elections following which the AAP demanded that VVPAT machines be used.
- Delhi security tightened: Having labelled 774 premises and 4,748 booths in Delhi as sensitive and hypersensitive, chief spokesperson of Delhi Police and Special Commissioner of Police (Operations), Dependra Pathak said that 56,000 police and paramilitary personnel have been deployed in the city for hassle-free elections.
