Chennai, Apr 6 (IANS): 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.