‘Important to get out and contribute’ says S Jaishankar after voting for Delhi polls

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar was among the early voters to exercise franchise for Delhi Assembly elections. Jaishankar cast his vote at the polling station set up at NDMC School of Science and Humanities Education at Tuglak Cresent along with wife Kyoko Jaishankar on Saturday morning.

“It is a basic duty of every citizen to vote. It is important to get out and contribute,” he said.

Over 1.4 crore people, who are eligible to vote in the Delhi Assembly election, will choose 70 MLAs today.

Polling for the 70 seats of Delhi Assembly began at 8 am, and the voting will continue till 6 pm.

In the last elections, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had registered a landslide victory by winning 67 seats. The BJP had won just three. The Congress didn’t open its account. The AAP is hoping to win the electoral battle again this time.

All the parties campaigned aggressively in the run-up to the elections. The BJP had a busy Friday as senior leaders held meetings to oversee preparations for polling day on Saturday and said the party’s aggressive campaign, which focussed on nationalism, will help it sway the “indecisive” voters.

“Nearly 1,800 party workers per assembly constituency have been deployed to ensure that the party wins by a huge margin. This time, we have campaigned at the grassroots level. Our senior leaders, including home minister Amit Shah, have held corner (nukkad) meetings,” said Shyam Jaju, Delhi BJP in-charge.

The AAP, meanwhile, has set up 70 war rooms in every assembly constituency and one central war room at Firoz Shah Road with the help of poll strategist Prashant Kishor’s I-PAC.

The party has deployed 67,815 ‘booth level mobilisers’ across the national capital to convince people to come out and vote. Apart from this, 27,126 ‘booth-level agents’ will also be present across the total 13,563 booths in Delhi.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged voters to be a part of the festival of democracy by coming out to vote in maximum numbers. “Today is the day of voting for the Delhi assembly elections. I appeal all voters to participate in this festival of democracy in maximum numbers and create a new voting record,” the Prime Minister tweeted in Hindi.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal too appealed to the people to cast their vote. He made a special appeal to the women voters.