Hisar (Haryana), Oct 13 (IANS): Polling for the by-election to the Hisar Lok Sabha seat in Haryana started Thursday morning amid tight security.

Polling will continue till 5 p.m. Counting of votes is scheduled Oct 17.

The three main hopefuls for the seat are Kuldeep Bishnoi of the Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC), the son of Bhajan Lal; Indian National Lok Dal's (INLD's) Ajay Chautala, the son of former chief minister Om Prakash Chautala; and three-time former MP Jai Prakash of the Congress.

Bishnoi has the support of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for this election.

The election hit the national spotlight after Anna Hazare and the members of his team stepped in to say that people should vote against the Congress as part of the fight against corruption and misgovernance.

There is heavy security to ensure the smooth conduct of voting; for the first time video-filming of all 1,506 polling centres will be done.

Three hundred and forty polling booths have been declared hyper-sensitive whereas 387 polling booths have been declared sensitive by the election commission.

Besides local police, around 40 companies of paramilitary forces have been deployed to avoid any kind of untoward incident. There are 1,332,000 voters - 729,857 men and 602,323 women - who will decide the fate of this seat, which fell vacant in June this year following the death of Bhajan Lal, a three-time chief minister.