Hyderabad: The polling process started amid tight security at 7 a.m. in all the constituencies of Telangana State except Nizamabad District where it began at 8 a.m. due to the presence of a record number of contestants.
Early voters started queuing up even before the polling booths had opened.
Voting will take place in all the 17 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana and all the 25 in Andhra Pradesh.
Chief Electoral Officers in both the states said that polling is peaceful and smooth except at a few places where the process was delayed due to technical snags in the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).
They said all the voters standing in queues at the end of the scheduled polling time would be allowed to cast their votes.
The polling in Telangana will end at 5 p.m., except in 13 Maoist-affected Assembly segments under five Lok Sabha constituencies where it will end an hour early. In Nizamabad, the process will continue till 6 p.m.
In Telangana, nearly 2.97 crore voters will decide the fates of 443 candidates including 25 women in the single-phase polling. The state has 34,603 polling stations including 5,749 “sensitive” ones.
Officials in Hyderabad are monitoring the process through web-casting from over 4,000 polling booths. In other booths, the process is being video recorded.
As many as 3 lakh personnel including about a lakh policemen are deployed to ensure free and fair polling across Telangana. Officials said that they are using 79,882 EVMs besides 42,853 control units and 46,731 VVPATs.
With inputs from IANS