Campaigning for Lok Sabha poll ends in Delhi

Campaigning for the Lok Sabha polls in the national capital ended Tuesday, with candidates from political parties criss-crossing their constituencies in a last attempt to woo voters ahead of the April 10 polling.

An estimated 12 million voters will be eligible to take part in the day-long polling across 11,763 centres Thursday to pick seven Lok Sabha members from among 150 candidates, including 57 Independents.

Candidates of all the three main parties - Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the AAP - held scores of road shows, door-to-door campaigns, public meetings and rallies across the city as they made one last attempt to woo the voters.

Delhi BJP president Harsh Vardhan, contesting from Chandni Chowk constituency, went on a road show with fellow leader Navjot Singh Sidhu and visited many localities in his area, including Wazirpur, Kanhaiya Nagar, Keshavpuram and Bharat Nagar, seeking people's support.

The party's candidate from South Delhi, Ramesh Bidhuri, who too was joined by Sidhu, met voters in Chirag Delhi, Nehru Place and Govindpuri localities.

On the final day of campaigning, sitting Congress member from New Delhi Ajay Maken met residents of Gulmohar Park journalists' colony at an interaction over breakfast.

The Congress general secretary said his prospects of getting re-elected were very good.

Meanwhile, AAP leaders in their rallies attacked the BJP and Congress, calling them communal and corrupt.

AAP's Anand Kumar, contesting from North East Delhi, said in his rally that the people would defeat the communal BJP and corrupt Congress and choose AAP.

The last day also witnessed an ugly incident involving AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal who was slapped by an auto-rickshaw driver while campaigning for party candidate Rakhi Birla in West Delhi's Sultanpuri area. The attack left the 45-year-old Kejriwal with a swollen left eye.

The national capital will for the first time witness a three-way battle between the Congress, which lost control of Delhi after the December 2013 assembly polls, a confident BJP and the vocal AAP that ruled Delhi for 49 days till Feb 14 earlier this year.

Even as both the BJP and AAP claimed they will win all seven seats in Delhi, the Congress, whose 15-year rule in Delhi ended in December, said voters who had ignored the party back then have returned.

Political observers feel the BJP has the upper hand in Delhi, and AAP could win two of the seven seats.