A voter turnout of 8.10% was recorded till 9 am on Wednesday in the Delhi Assembly elections, according to Election Commission data.

While the North East district in the national capital recorded the highest turnout with 10.7% of voters casting their ballot, New Delhi district saw the lowest at 6.51%.

Voting in the national capital began at 7 am and will end at 6 pm. There are 699 candidates in the fray.

Polling is taking place in a single phase across 13,766 polling stations set up at 2,696 locations for over 1.5 crore eligible voters to cast their ballot. The votes will be counted on Saturday.

The Election Commission has deployed 220 companies of the Central Armed Police Forces, 35,626 personnel from the Delhi Police and 19,000 Home Guards to ensure peaceful polling, ANI reported.

Around 3,000 polling booths have also been identified as sensitive, where special security arrangements, including drone surveillance, have been arranged.

The national capital is witnessing a three-way contest between the Aam Aadmi Party, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Among the prominent candidates in the fray are Aam Aam Party chief Arvind Kejriwal, who will be contesting against the BJP’s Parvesh Verma and Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit from the New Delhi Assembly constituency.

Chief Minister Atishi is contesting against BJP candidate Ramesh Bidhuri and the Congress’ Alka Lamba in Kalkaji.

The Jangpura seat will see a contest between Aam Aadmi Party leader Manish Sisodia, BJP candidate Tarvinder Singh Marwah and the Congress’ Farhad Suri.

Key contenders for the Greater Kailash seat are Aam Aadmi Party leader and Delhi minister Saurabh Bhardwaj, the BJP’s Shikha Rai and the Congress’ Garvit Singhvi.

Delhi had recorded a voter turnout of 62.59% in the 2020 Assembly elections and 56% in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

In 2020, the Aam Aadmi Party won 62 of 70 seats in the Assembly. The BJP won the remaining eight seats.

Voting underway for Milkipur bye-polls

Voting was also underway for the bye-election in the Milkipur Assembly seat across 414 polling stations in Uttar Pradesh.

The bye-election was necessitated after Samajwadi Party’s Awadhesh Prasad resigned as the MLA after being elected to the Lok Sabha in June. His son is the party’s candidate from the constituency.

The counting of votes will also take place on Saturday.

FIR against Arvind Kejriwal

Hours ahead of the Assembly elections in Delhi, another first information report was filed against Kejriwal in Haryana’s Kurukshetra for his claims that the state was poisoning water from the Yamuna river being supplied to the national capital, India Today reported.

The case was registered based on a complaint by Shahbad resident Jagmohan Manchanda, The Indian Express reported.

The Aam Aadmi Party chief has been booked under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to promoting enmity, spreading false information that could harm India’s unity, making false charges against someone and deliberately insulting religious beliefs.

In January, the BJP government in Haryana also said it had filed a first information report against Kejriwal for his claims

On January 27, Kejriwal shared a video on social media of Delhi Chief Minister Atishi alleging a conspiracy by the BJP to poison the drinking water in Delhi.

On the next day, Atishi backed the AAP convenor’s claims by citing a purported letter from the chief executive officer of the Delhi Jal Board, which highlighted that while Delhi’s water treatment plants were designed to handle up to 1 parts per million of ammonia, the levels in the Yamuna water far exceeded the permissible limits.