Punjab assembly elections 2012: Voting opens in 22 districts

CHANDIGARH: Around 1.76 crore voters are expected to cast their franchise today to choose representative from among 1078 candidates, including two Chief Ministerial aspirants Parkash Singh Badal and Amarinder Singh, in fray for 117 assembly seats in Punjab where polling began this morning.

In view of the early morning chill, voting began on a dull note at 19,841 polling stations across 22 districts of Punjab.

Prominent candidates whose fate would be sealed today include the Chief Minister from his traditional Lambi Assembly seat, his predecessor Amarinder Singh from Patiala city, their sons Sukhbir Singh Badal (Jalalabad) and Raninder Singh (Samana), former chief minister Rajinder Kaur Bhattal (Lehra), former Punjab top cop P S Gill (Moga), former Principal Secretary to the chief minister D S Guru (Bhadaur) and former SGPC chief Bibi Jagir Kaur (Bholath).

The Chief Minister is scheduled to cast his vote at a polling station in Lambi constituency.

A total of 70972, including 225 paramilitary force personnel have been deployed to conduct the elections which began at 8 AM and would continue till 5 PM.

At least 2627 video cameras and 554 digital cameras have been installed at polling booths. Around 203 polling stations will be using live web-casting.

Of the polling stations, 2718 have been identified hyper sensitive and 6379 as sensitive.

Ludhiana East (16), Patiala rural (13) and Jalalabad (14) are the assembly constituencies where maximum number of contestants are in the fray. The least number of contestants are in Attari (4).

Out of the 1,078 candidates in fray 417, including 45 women, are Independents. At the last hustings in 2007, after scrutiny and withdrawal there were a total of 1,055 candidates, including 56 women, in fray.