New Delhi, Feb 3 (IANS): The services of Delhi Metro will begin at 4:00 a.m. on February 5 and 8 in a bid to facilitate election duty staff during the Assembly elections and counting of votes. The decision has been announced by Anuj Dayal, Principal Executive Director, Corporate Communications, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC).

On the day of the Assembly Election, February 5, and vote counting day on February 8, all Delhi Metro train services will start from their terminal stations at 4:00 a.m. The services will run at a frequency of 30 minutes until 6:00 a.m. and after 6:00 a.m., regular Metro services will operate for the rest of the day.

Additionally, to support polling officials and staff returning late after election duty, the last Metro services on all lines will be extended on the intervening night of February 5 and 6.

Meanwhile, the Delhi Lieutenant Governor has declared February 5, a public holiday for all government offices, local bodies, public sector undertakings, and autonomous bodies in the National Capital Region (NCR) of Delhi. This notification was issued under the orders of the Lieutenant Governor.

Voting to pick a new 70-member Delhi Assembly will be held on February 5 and the result will be declared on February 8. In the outgoing House, the AAP has 62 candidates and the BJP has eight.

According to the data of the Delhi Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), 1.56 crore voters are eligible to cast their ballots across 13,766 polling stations. Among the total voters, 83.76 lakh are men, 72.36 lakh are women, and 1,267 are third-gender voters.

There are 699 candidates in the fray as compared to 672 in the 2020 poll.