Gandhinagar, Oct 3 : After the entry of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation elections (GMC) now sees a three-cornered battle on Sunday, the other two rivals being the BJP and Congress. Besides, the Thara and Okha municipalities as well as bypolls to seats lying vacant in a couple of other cities are also scheduled. The elections assume significance as it is the first electoral test for the new Chief Minister, Bhupendra Patel. The Gujarat state election Commission (SEC) will be conducting the election to the state capital's 11 wards at 284 polling booths. The SEC has trained over 1,500 personnel for the democratic exercise. Out of the total booths, four are extremely sensitive, 144 sensitive and 136 normal booths. There are around 2.30 lakh registered voters in the state capital Gandhinagar, expected to exercise their democratic rights to elect 44 councillors from 162 candidates across 11 wards of the GMC. These include 44 candidates each from the BJP and Congress, 40 from the AAP, 14 from Bahujan Samaj Party, 2 from Nationalist Congress Party, 6 from other parties and 11 independent candidates. Counting of the votes will take place on October 5. If required, re-polling for a particular seat may be held on October 4. A significant number of the voters are government employees and considering this the municipal corporation elections assume a special significance. Besides, this is the first major election after Bhupendra Patel took charge as the Gujarat chief minister. In the previous 2016 elections, the BJP and Congress had both won 16 seats each out of the total 32 seats. However, within days, two Congress councillors defected to the BJP, paving way for the saffron party to form the body in the GMC. Pravin Patel, one of the defectors, was then elected mayor. The GMC polls were earlier scheduled for April 10, but were postponed due to the pandemic. Besides this, by-elections are to be held for two seats of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and one seat of the Jamnagar Municipal Corporation, for which 10 candidates are in fray. Of these, three each are from BJP and Congress, one from NCP, two from AAP and one from another party. The ruling party in Gujarat, the BJP candidates have been declared unopposed winners on 4 seats of ward number 3 in Thara and on 2 seats of ward number 8 of Okha municipality. A total of 205 candidates are in fray for 78 seats in Thara, Okha and Bhanwad, of which 78 are from BJP, 72 from Congress, 52 from AAP and 3 independents. Against 8 seats left empty in various district panchayats, there are 24 candidates in the race. /IANS