New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday accused the Central government of putting pressure on the Election Commission to defer municipal corporation elections in the national capital and urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to rescind the decision. Kejriwal said the Delhi Election Commission had called a press conference to announce the dates for the Municipal Corporation polls on Wednesday but did not announce it saying the Centre was planning to unify the three corporations. “It is perhaps for the first time since independence that the Union government has written to the poll panel to defer an election. The BJP has been in the Center for 7-8 years. If they wanted to unify the MCDs, why did they not do it earlier? They remembered it an hour before the election was to be announced,” he said. “Unifying the municipal corporations was an excuse, the intention was to defer the elections,” Kejriwal said, adding that the BJP feared a defeat in the battle for Delhi’s municipal corporations. He said that unifying the corporations does not require a deferment of the elections as it can be done after the elections too. “I fold my hands and appeal to the Prime Minister… Governments will come and go, we are not important, parties are not important, the country is important. Pressuring the Election Commission to defer the elections weakens the institution. “We have to protect the country, we cannot allow the institutions to be weakened,” he said. “I request you do not cancel the elections, it is a big threat to democracy.” The Delhi Election Commission was to announce the date for municipal elections on March 9. However, at the press conference, State Election Commissioner of Delhi, S K Srivastava, said the dates will be announced in the next few days. He said the poll panel received a communication from the Central government at 4.30 pm on the issue of merger. There are 104 wards each in the North and the South Delhi Municipal Corporations. The East Delhi Municipal Corporation has 64 wards. The three municipal corporations of Delhi are currently ruled by the BJP, which has been in control of MCD since its trifurcation in 2012. UNI AO MR
