Bhopal, Jul 13 (IANS): Voting for the second phase of elections was underway on Wednesday amid tight security in five Municipal Corporations, 40 Municipal councils and 169 Nagar Parishads.

As per the State Election Commission (SEC), close to 7,000 polling centers have been set up for voting in 43 districts of the state. Out of which 1,627 polling centers have been identified as sensitive.

About 17,000 police personnel have been deployed to ensure free and fair elections. Besides these, 34,000 duty officers and personnel have also been deployed. Meanwhile, efforts have been made to provide voters slip to the eligible voters by the commission.

Notably, after the first phase of municipal elections that covered Indore and Bhopal, the ruling BJP had blamed the election commission for not distributing voter's slip due to which voting percentage was recorded low, especially in Bhopal.

Five Municipal Corporations where voting is being held for mayoral and cooperators' posts are -- Katni, Rewa, Dewas, Ratlam and Morena. Voting that began at 7 a.m. will conclude at 5 p.m.

There are 49.9 lakh voters who will seal the fate of these candidates on Wednesday during the second and final phase of the civic polls. Of these, 25.20 lakh are males, 23.88 lakh are female voters and 292 are voters from the third gender.

Among the five municipal corporations, there are 2.52 lakh voters in Morena municipal corporation, 1.71 lakh voters in Rewa, 1.93 lakh voters in Katni, 2.39 lakh voters in Dewas and 1.21 lakh voters in Ratlam municipal corporation.