Voting for the 230 Assembly seats in Madhya Pradesh is currently underway on Friday, across 64,626 polling booths. The voting process began at 7 a.m. and will end at 6 p.m. Of the 64,626 polling booths, 17,032 have been categorised as sensitive.
There are a total 5.59 crore registered voters in Madhya Pradesh, of of which 2.87 crore are male and 2.71 crore female, while 1,292 others are of the third gender.
According to Election Commission of India, there are a total 2,533 candidates in the fray, including Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan as well as Union Ministers Narendra Singh Tomar, Faggan Singh Kulaste and Prahlad Patel.
Former Chief Minister Kamal Nath and his son Nakul Nath cast their votes in Chhindwara, while state Home Minister Narottam Mishra voted in Dadia.
Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh's son and former state minister Jaivardhan Singh and former chief minister Arjun Singh's son Ajay Singh are contesting from their traditional Raghogarh and Churhat seats, respectively.
The main parties in the fray are Congress, the BJP, Aam Aadmi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP). BJP General Secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya is contesting from Indore-1 and three Lok Sabha MPs of BJP -- Rakesh Singh, Ganesh Singh and Riti Pathak -- are also in the fray.
In the last Assembly elections held in 2018, the Congress had bagged 114 seats against the BJP's 109 seats. The Congress had then formed the government with the help of Independent MLAs along with the SP and BSP. However, the Kamal Nath-led government collapsed within 15 months.
Chhattisgarh 2nd Phase
Meanwhile, voting in the second phase of the Chhattisgarh Assembly election began at 7 a.m. across all 70 assembly constituencies. Twenty seats had voted in the first phase of the polling in Chhattisgarh Assembly election 2023.
As many as 958 candidates are vying for the electorate's approval, with the polls set to shape the future of many high-profile leaders, including Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel and his deputy T.S. Singh Deo.
(With inputs from IANS)
