Polling begins in Uttarakhand

Dehradun, Feb 15 (IANS) Voting for the 69 seats of the Uttarakhand state assembly began at 8 a.m. on Wednesday amid tight security, a poll official said.

This is the fourth assembly poll in the hill state where 75,13,547 voters will decide the fate of 628 candidates.

Polling in Karnprayag has been suspended for now due to the death of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate. Voting will now be held on this seat on March 9, said the Election Commission official.

Postal ballots will be received till March 11 morning, the day of vote counting.

Chief Electoral Officer Radha Raturi informed that there are 10,685 polling stations in the state of which 460 are in the hilly snowy regions while 287 are in shadow areas.

The state capital here has the maximum number of polling stations (1,725) while Rudraprayag the least with 312.

A total of 1,409 polling stations have been put in the very sensitive list while 1,424 have been marked as sensitive.

Videography is being done at 221 places while photography of the poll process is being done at 2,012 polling centres along with webcasting at 197 places.

The highest polling station is in Yamunotri at 9,800 feet above sea level. Heavy security deployment has been made at all the polling stations with CRPF being deployed at 1,285 polling stations.

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