Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari was among the first few voters to cast his vote at the Nirmal Bhawan polling booth in New Delhi constituency on Wednesday.
Aam Admi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal, who is contesting from the New Delhi constituency against incumbent Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and BJP leader V. Gupta, cast his vote within the first half an hour of polling.
BJP chief ministerial candidate Dr. Harsh Vardhan, who is contesting from the Krishnanagar seat in East Delhi was also among the first voters to cast his vote.
Earloer, national capital Delhi went to polls early on Wednesday morning amidst tight security to prevent any untoward incident.
Over 1.19 crore voters will exercise their right to vote to elect candidates to the 70-member Delhi State Assembly. Over four lakh voters will cast their votes for the first time.
In all, 810 candidates, including 70 females are in the fray.
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Voting began at 8 a.m. this morning and will end at 5 p.m.
The Election Commission has made elaborate arrangements to ensure free and fair polls.
Intense vigil is being maintained to keep an eye on the misuse of money and muscle power in vulnerable areas, such as slum clusters and unauthorized colonies. Efforts have also been made to keep check on people coming to Delhi from Ghaziabad, Noida, Faridabad and Gurgaon, who may cast bogus votes during the polls.
Out of 11,753 polling booths, 630 have been declared sensitive. For the first time, webcasting has been introduced in all sensitive booths for live monitoring of proceedings.
About 64,000 police personnel and 107 companies of central paramilitary forces have been deployed to ensure a smooth conduct of the polls.
The Congress, BJP and the Aam Aadmi Party are the main parties to form the next government in the state.
In all, 66, 11, 362 males, 53, 20, 705 females, 4509 service and six NRI voters will be exercising their right to vote. The number of types of assembly constituencies are 58 in the general category; 12 in Scheduled Caste category, non in Scheduled Tribe category.
The Burari Assembly constituency will witness 23 Candidates contesting against each other, while the Patel Nagar assembly constituency will witness only four candidates in the fray.
The Bhartiya Janata Party is fielding 68 candidates in the polls, while the Bahujan Samaj Party is fielding 69. The Communist Party of India (CPI) will field ten candidates, while the Communist Party of India (Marxist) will field three candidates.
The Indian National Congress will field 70 candidates, while the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) will field nine candidates. The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has said that it will field two candidates, while the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has announced that it will field 70 candidates. About 509 Independents plus others will contest the polls.
Narela is the largest assembly constituency in terms of area at 143.42 square kilometers. The largest assembly constituency in terms of the size of the electorate is Vikas Puri at 2, 82, 632. The smallest assembly constituency electorate wise is Delhi Cantt. At 85,821.
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