Voting for bitterly fought Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections to 272 wards, which will reshape the political equations in the country's power capital after results is underway.
With very low turnout, voters in a few municipal wards faced problems as Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) at some polling booths did not work properly in the city.
There were also complaints of faulty EVMs in North Delhi Burari area and South West Delhi's Kapashera due to which voting had to be stopped for a few minutes.
Lt Governor Anil Baijal, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia were among the first to cast their votes.
Kejriwal, accompanied by his parents, wife and daughter, reached a polling booth in North Delhi's Civil Lines area to cast vote. Kejriwal's daughter, Harshita, voted for the first time.
After casting his vote, he said the people of Delhi should come out of their houses and exercise their franchise for "dengue and chikungunya-free Delhi".
The elections will determine whether the sway of Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP - which had stunned all by bagging 67 seats in the 2015 assembly polls - still holds and if the Rajouri Garden defeat was due to hostile constituency dynamics.
For the BJP, holding on to power fighting a decade-long anti-incumbency is a challenge and an opportunity to blunt Kejriwal's attempts to emerge as the principal adversary of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Congress, which has considerably increased its vote share in polls held after 2015 where it was reduced to zero, is hoping to gain its lost ground and make its presence felt, despite unabated infighting.
Key Highlights
# The three civic bodies going to polls are the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) and the East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC).
# Voting will take place in 272 wards spread across three municipal corporations.
The NDMC and SDMC have 104 seats each in their House while EDMC has a strength of 64.
# Over 1.3 crore people are eligible to vote in the polls and of them more than 1.1 lakh are first-time voters.
# For the first time in MCD elections, None Of The Above (NOTA) option will be available.
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