Thiruvananthapuram, Apr 6 (IANS): At sharp 7 a.m on Wednesday, polling got underway to elect a new 140-member Kerala Legislative Assembly.
The fate of 957 candidates would be decided by an electorate of 1,41,62,025 women, 1,32,83,724 men and 290 transgender voters.
Polling is taking place according to strict Covid protocols and while in the 2016 Assembly polls, 21,498 polling booths were there, this time due to the Covid pandemic the number of polling booths has been increased to 40,771.
The poll will end at 7 p.m. and the last hour has been kept aside for Covid positive patients and for those in quarantine.
The principal political fronts contesting the elections are the ruling CPI-M-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) and the BJP led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
In the outgoing Assembly (2016 polls) the LDF had 91 seats, the UDF 47 the NDA one seat and there was one independent candidate.
Across the state, people were seen queuing up before the polling time.
The poll officials at 5.30 a.m. conducted mock polling to see that all the electronic voting machines are in order.
59,292 Kerala police officials and 140 companies of CISF, CRPF and BSF officials are also deployed for duty, which is by far the biggest deployment of central forces for any poll in the state.
The counting of votes will take place on May 2.