NE NEWS SERVICE
CHENNAI, APR 6
Brisk polling was witnessed across the 234-assembly constituencies in Tamil Nadu on Tuesday where people are voting to elect the 16th Assembly.
According to the Election Commission of India, 13.80 per cent of votes have been polled in the state till 9 a.m.
Polling began at 7 a.m. and would end at 7 p.m.
At some polling booths, voting began a bit late owing to technical glitches.
A total of 3,998 candidates are in the fray seeking the 6.28 crore voters’ favour to enter the Tamil Nadu Assembly.
With 77 contestants, the Karur Assembly seat sees the highest number of Assembly aspirants.
Leaders of various political parties, several movie actors and general public were seen voting early.
Deputy Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam, DMK President M.K. Stalin, PMK Founder S.Ramadoss, Congress leader P. Chidambaram, DMDK Treasurer Premalatha Vijayakant, NTK leader Seeman, MNM leader Kamal Haasan and others cast their votes.
Similarly, the Chief Electoral Officer Satyabrata Sahoo, who is managing the poll show in the state, too cast his vote.
From the movie field Rajinikanth, star couple Ajit Kumar and Shalini, Surya, Karthi, Sivakumar too have cast their votes.
Ajit Kumar and Shalini had reached their polling booth about 20 minutes before the start of polling to vote early in order to avoid the fan crowd.
He, in fact, never fails to vote in any election. In the past polls too, he was seen standing in the queue to cast his vote.
Speaking to reporters after voting, Stalin said, “people were casting their votes enthusiastically and the May 2 result will be great”.
A total of 88,937 polling booths are there in the state and over 1,59,165 electronic voting machines have been deployed.
About 1.58 lakh security personnel have been deployed to prevent any untoward incident.
Similarly, voting also began for the lone Kanyakumari Lok Sabha seat where bypoll is being held simultaneously.
Brisk polling underway in Puducherry
Polling in the single phase of assembly election in Puducherry began on a brisk note on Tuesday with people queuing up early at the booths to cast their vote.
Voting began at 7 a.m. simultaneously in all the four regions of Puducherry, Karaikal, Mahe and Yanam to elect 30 legislators. A spokesman of the Election Department said that although the percentage of polling for the first two hours would be known only around 9.30 a.m. turn out of the voters at the booths was swelling in most of the constituencies.
“People perhaps wanted to exercise franchise before the intense heat begins,” a resident of a nearby constituency said.
Puducherry and its outlying regions have a strength of 10.04 lakh voters. There are 324 contestants sponsored by political parties and independents. Founder leader of the AINRC heading the NDA here N Rangasamy is among the important candidates in the poll fray.
Former Chief Minister V Narayanasamy opted out of the poll battle. While AINRC is contesting in 16 seats, its alliance partners the BJP woos voters in 9 segments and the AIADMK in remaining five seats. The Congress is contesting 14 seats and supports an Independent in Yanam and its allies– the DMK in 13, VCK and CPI the other constituents of the alliance led by Congress have fielded one candidate each. There are 1558 polling booths.
The authorities have set up one all women polling booth in every constituency. In such booths all the staffs manning the booths are women.
Police including Central Armed police personnel have been deployed in strength to ensure peace. Around 330 booths have been identified as vulnerable.
