JAIPUR — Voting was underway for 13 seats in the second phase of Lok Sabha elections in Rajasthan on Friday.
Voting was being held in Jodhpur, Barmer, Pali, Jalore, Rajsamand, Ajmer, Bhilwara, Chittorgarh, Udaipur, Banswara, Tonk-Sawai Madhopur, Kota, Jhalawar-Baran. A total of 152 candidates are in the fray for these seats.
Long queues were seen in the early morning in different polling booths.
Over 2.80 crore voters will decide the fate of the candidates contesting for 13 seats.
Of these, 8.66 lakh voters under the age group of 18 to 19 years old are first-time voters out of which over five lakh are boys and over three lakh voters are girls, and nine voters are third gender.
In Chittorgarh, the first 25 voters were given certificates by the district administration. In booth 147, the first voter Jamak Lal Sukhwal, 61, and the female voter Simple Vaishnav, 59, got the first certificate.
Rajasthan Education Minister Madan Dilawar was the first to vote at the polling booth in Veer Savarkar Nagar of Kota. His wife also voted along with him.
Ot of the seats going for polls on Friday, there is a triangular contest in Barmer and Banswara.
At the same time, there is a tough fight in Kota where Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla is in the fray against Congress' Prahlad Gunjal, who left BJP after being denied a ticket and joined Congress.
On Thursday evening, a postal ballot with the number 112369 went viral on social media. When information about this reached the Banswara district administration, the investigation started.
Banswara Collector Inderjit Yadav said that this postal ballot comes from the Dungarpur area. This information has been given to the Dungarpur Collector, he said.
On the other hand, Dungarpur Collector Ankit Kumar Singh said that the person in whose name this postal ballot has been issued is working in MBC in Banswara district. This information has been given to Banswara SP, he said, adding that action will be taken at their level.