Delhi mayoral poll on Wednesday to see direct fight between AAP, BJP

New Delhi: The mayoral election in Delhi on Wednesday will be a direct contest between incumbent Shelly Oberoi from AAP and BJP leader Shikha Rai.

The polling will be held at the Civic Centre — the headquarters of the MCD. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is the ruling party in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD).

Oberoi was elected Delhi mayor on February 22 in the fourth attempt since the earlier elections were stalled amid a ruckus over voting rights being given to nominated members. She had defeated BJP's Rekha Gupta by a margin of 34 votes by polling 150 votes. Gupta got 116 of the total 266 votes polled.

The post of mayor in the national capital sees five single-year terms on a rotational basis with the first year reserved for women, the second for the open category, the third for the reserved category and the remaining two again for the open category.

The city gets a new mayor after the end of a financial year.

Incumbent Oberoi will continue to hold charge till a new mayor is elected, official sources said on April 3.

AAP's Oberoi and Aaley Mohammad Iqbal filed their nominations earlier this month for the posts of mayor and deputy mayor respectively for a possible second consecutive term, with the Arvind Kejriwal-led party exuding confidence that its candidates are poised for a win.

According to the Delhi Municipal Corporation (DMC) Act, 1957, the mayor and the deputy mayor are to be elected in the very first session of the House after the civic polls.

The civic polls held on December 4 last year were the first after the three corporations were unified into the MCD and a fresh delimitation exercise was carried out, reducing the number of wards from 272 in 2012 to 250.

The AAP had emerged victorious in the high-stakes polls.

The unification of the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (104 wards), South Delhi Municipal Corporation (104 wards) and East Delhi Municipal Corporation (64 wards) happened last year, with a notification issued to that effect in May 2022.