Chandigarh, Oct 13 (IANS) Voting to elect members for Haryana's 90 assembly seats began Tuesday morning.

The fate of 1,222 candidates will be decided by an electorate of over 1.31 crore.

Rural voters were among the first ones to turn up outside polling stations in various villages as polling began at 7 a.m.

Haryana's Chief Electoral Officer Sajjan Singh said all arrangements were in place for the smooth conduct of polling.

Nearly 70,000 government officials and about 65,000 security personnel have been engaged for the poll process.

Assembly elections in Haryana are being held simultaneously with polls in Maharashtra and Arunachal Pradesh.

Counting of votes will take place Oct 22.

The Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led Congress government in Haryana got the previous assembly dissolved August, seven months before its term ended.

The Congress had won nine out of 10 Lok Sabha seats in the May parliamentary elections.

While the Congress is upbeat about its chances of returning to power, opposition parties like Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) are claiming that winds of political change are blowing in the state.

Chief Minister Hooda is seeking re-election from the Garhi Sampla-Kiloi (Rohtak) seat while INLD chief Om Prakash Chautala is contesting two seats - Uchana Kalan (Jind) and Ellenabad (Sirsa).

HJC president Kuldeep Bishnoi is contesting from the Adampur (Hisar) seat which was earlier represented by his father and former chief minister Bhajan Lal.