The Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s (MCD) ward committee elections for appointment of the chairman and deputy chairmen for each of the 12 zonal bodies will be held on September 4.

According to the official order on Wednesday, the election will be held through secret ballot in accordance with the Delhi Municipal Corporation Regulations, 1958, it said.

The councillors have time till August 30 to file their nominations with the municipal secretary. The elections in six zones of the MCD namely City and SP Zone, Rohini Zone, Najafgarh Zone, West Zone, South Zone and Central Zone will be held between 10 am to 4 pm at Hansraj Gupta Auditorium at the civic body headquarters.

In the remaining six zones, which include Karol Bagh Zone, Keshav Puram Zone, Shahdara South Zone, Shahdara North Zone, Civil Lines Zone and Narela Zone, the elections will be held parallelly at Satya Narayan Bansal Auditorium at the MCD headquarters.

As per the DMC regulations, every candidate for the election shall be nominated by a nomination paper in the prescribed form, which shall be signed by the candidate and two other members of the Corporation as proposer and seconder.

The nomination has to be delivered to the municipal secretary between 11 am and 5 pm at least three clear days before the date of meeting at which the election is to be held. This year they have to do it by Friday on August 30.

Any candidate may withdraw his candidature at any time before the election is proceeded within the meeting, the order states. The ward committees are essential for formation of the standing committee, the highest decision-making body of the MCD.

As per the provision of the DMC regulations, the ward committees in their first meeting each year, elects one of its members, who is a councillor, to be the chairman and another members as the deputy chairman of the zonal level body. It also nominates one member each for the standing committee.

The September 4 elections will be considered as the first meeting of the ward committees. Due to political deadlock between the ruling AAP and the opposition BJP, the elections for the ward committee and the subsequent standing committee have been delayed by over one and a half years which has kept several key policy decisions, requiring the administrative approval of the standing committee, in doldrums.

Reacting to the order, Delhi BJP Spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor stated that the announcement of the ward committee elections is a victory for democracy in the city. “For the past approximately 19 months, AAP had suppressed the constitutional and democratic committees in the MCD. The BJP had been consistently pushing for the formation of these committees, and today, the rights of the people of Delhi and the BJP have triumphed,” he said, adding that the maintenance of Delhi will improve, and start development work.

“The BJP will not only win the majority of ward committee elections, but we will also win the upcoming Standing Committee election in a few days, and we will ensure that the stalled development work in Delhi resumes,” Kapoor asserted.