Triangular contest in Delhi as it goes to polls on Sunday

Team Udayavani, May 11, 2019, 1:31 PM IST

New Delhi: The stage is set as the national capital goes to Lok Sabha polls on Sunday where the incumbent BJP, Delhi’s ruling AAP and the Congress are locked in a fight on all seven seats.

The Congress is looking to bounce back after ending up at the third spot in the 2014 elections.

The lead up to the polls has not been without drama, with allegations and counter-allegations flying, and it had all the trappings of a soap opera that could give the daily shows a run for their money.

The high-octane poll campaigning in the national capital ended on Friday but not before it saw a plethora of stars descending here to campaign for their respective parties.

If Hema Malini and Sunny Deol provided the Bollywood quotient to the saffron party’s campaign, Raj Babbar and Nagma added the star quotient to the Congress. Prakash Raj, Swara Bhaskar and Gul Panag campaigned for the AAP.

From Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal being slapped to AAP’s East Delhi candidate Atishi breaking down at a press conference over “derogatory pamphlets” to BJP’s Udit Raj leaving the party and joining the Congress after being denied a ticket from northwest Delhi, the last two months been quite eventful and have kept everyone on their toes.

The seven seats will see 164 candidates battling it out of which 18 are women. Prominent among them are former chief minister Sheila Dikshit from northeast Delhi, BJP’s incumbent MP Meenakshi Lekhi, who is contesting from New Delhi, and Atishi.

BJP’s incumbent MP Manoj Tiwari is up against Dikshit for the Northeast Delhi seat and has already said that her entry has made the poll contest “one of the most interesting in the country”. AAP’s Dilip Pandey is also in the fray from the seat.

Voting will begin at 7 am on May 12 and it is scheduled to go on till 6 am.