We will sweep municipal polls: AAP

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) claimed on Thursday that it was set to win 218 of the 272 municipal wards in Delhi in Sunday's election.

AAP leader Ashish Khetan told the media that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has controlled the civic body for 10 years, would be left with 39 wards and the Congress eight.

Independent candidates and smaller parties would corner a huge 11.5 per cent of all votes but win just seven seats, he said.

Khetan said these figures had emerged after a professional agency interviewed around 31,000 voters in Delhi on who they planned to vote for in the civic polls.

The AAP, which rules Delhi, would grab 51.2 per cent of all votes, 3.1 per cent less than what it got when it swept 67 of the 70 assembly seats in 2015, he said.

The BJP would get 28.1 per cent of the votes and the Congress 9.2 per cent, he said.

"A sizeable section among traditional BJP voters were showing a shift towards the AAP following our house tax waiver announcement," he said.

The survey focusing on issues of sanitation, corruption and work of the Delhi government was conducted between April 7 and 17.

According to Khetan, 61 per cent of the respondents blamed the municipal corporation for lack of cleanliness in Delhi and 60 per cent said corruption in the civic body was a major election issue.

Most of those interviewed were happy with the AAP government's work in the health and education sectors.

Quoting the survey, Khetan said slashing electricity bills by half and providing free water up to 20,000 litres per household per month had won most approval in slum clusters and unauthorised colonies.

Elections to 272 wards of the three civic corporations - East, South and North Delhi - would be held on April 23. The results would be declared on April 26.

--IANS

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