Polling began in Telangana on Thursday amid tight security to elect a new Assembly.
The polling will be held from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. in 106 constituencies, while in 13 Left Wing Extremism (LWE) affected constituencies, the polling will conclude at 4 p.m.
Around 2.8 crore voters will decide the fate of 1,821 candidates in the first election after Telangana was formed.
The ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) is facing a resurgent Congress-led People's Front in its bid for a second term.
The TRS government dissolved the Assembly about eight months ahead of the schedule in the hope of taking the Opposition parties by surprise but the Congress threw a surprise by coming up with an alliance in a bid to oust the ruling party.
For the 119-member Telangana assembly where the Congress has tied up with rivals TDP, CPI and Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS), a new party floated by M. Kodandaram, who was once Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao's friend in the Telangana movement.
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Telangana has 51,796 polling stations, an increase of 14.25 per cent over the previous election in 2013.
--IANS
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