The Assembly elections in Delhi will take place in a single phase on February 5, the Election Commission announced on Tuesday.
The counting of votes will take place on February 8.
The term of the Legislative Assembly in Delhi will end on February 23.
The Model Code of Conduct came into force with the poll schedule being announced.
The code is a set of guidelines issued by the poll panel that political parties, candidates and the government must follow during an election. It sets guardrails for speeches, campaigning, meetings, processions, election manifestos and other aspects of the polls.
The Election Commission on Tuesday also announced the schedule for the Assembly bye-elections in Uttar Pradesh’s Milkipur and Erode East in Tamil Nadu. Voting for the bye-elections will also take place on February 5, and the results will be announced on February 8.
Election schedule
| Process | Date |
|---|---|
| Date of issue of gazette notification | January 10 (Friday) |
| Last date of making nominations | January 17 (Friday) |
| Date of scrutiny of nominations | January 18 (Saturday) |
| Last date for withdrawal of candidates | January 20 (Monday) |
| Date of polling | February 5 (Wednesday) |
| Date of counting of votes | February 8 (Saturday) |
| Date before which election shall be completed | February 10 (Monday) |
Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar said that the national capital has 1.5 crore voters who will vote in 13,033 polling stations.
The Delhi Assembly has 70 members. A party or a coalition requires 36 seats to form the government.
Soon after the poll schedule was announced Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal said that the Assembly election will be a contest “between the politics of work and the politics of abuse.”
“The people of Delhi will repose faith in our politics of work,” the former chief minister said. “We will definitely win.”
Delhi BJP chief Virendraa Sachdeva said that the people of the national capital were eagerly waiting for the poll dates to be announced, as they had resolved to remove the Aam Aadmi Party from power.
The Aam Aadmi Party has been in power in the national capital since 2013, except for a year of president’s rule between 2014 and 2015.
In September, Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal stepped down as the chief minister and was replaced by party leader Atishi. Kejriwal said that he will return to the post only after voters have expressed their support for him in the Assembly polls.
Kejriwal’s resignation came a week after he was released on bail in the Delhi liquor policy case. He had been arrested in March ahead of the Lok Sabha election.
In the 2020 polls, the AAP won 62 seats with a 53.8% vote share. The remaining eight seats were won by the Bharatiya Janata Party, which secured 38.7% of the votes. With a 4.3% vote share, the Congress failed to win any seat.
The Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress are contesting the polls separately even though they are members of the Opposition INDIA bloc at the national level. In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the AAP-Congress alliance lost all seven parliamentary seats in Delhi to the BJP.
In recent weeks, the Aam Aadmi Party and the BJP have accused each other of manipulating the electoral rolls.
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