As seven winners raise hands,here’s raising a toast to city

There were 160 candidates in the final fray and voters trudged to one of the city’s 11,348 polling stations to cast their votes. Remarkably,re-polling had to be conducted in only four of the polling stations.

It was also an election of several firsts: the first time that an election in Delhi saw more urban voters than rural voters. While the final figures are still being computed,an “amazed” Bedi says,“I am very surprised by this trend but it’s also a great indication of the urban middle class becoming more conscious citizens.”

Janakpuri,a Punjabi-urban middle class colony,recorded the highest voter turnout at 60.23 per cent.

Also for the first time,the CEO’s office started the practice of distributing election duty certificates (EDCs) to officers on poll duty. “This was a provision for polling officers who were deployed in their own constituencies so that they,too,could cast their votes,” Bedi says. “Efforts were also made to encourage officers employed out of their Parliamentary constituency to cast their votes through postal ballots.”

With 73,184 officials on election duty,many chose to use one of the two methods available to them to cast their voters.

The various campaigns,initiated not just by the chief electoral officer’s office but also by corporate bodies,colleges,students and traders associations were also a first. “It was the first time I heard of shopkeepers offering discounts to voters,” Bedi says. The election office’s campaign also spurred voters — after all no one wanted to be a “Pappu”,as the poll slogan put it.

Many people believe the curbs on posters,banners and loudspeakers during the course of campaigning robbed this particular election of its intrinsic charm. But an official at the CEO’s office says,“We had to put measures into place to ensure that the exercise of elections does not cause any inconvenience to regular citizens and hence these measures were important.”