Punjab Assembly election | Polling starts at a sluggish pace in State

Voting is being held for all the 117 Punjab Assembly seats in a single phase with 1,304 candidates, including 93 women and two transgenders, in the fray

Voting for the 2022 Punjab Assembly election started at a sluggish pace with close to 5% turnout being registered till 9 a.m. on February 20.

According to the Election Commission, the voting, which started at 8 a.m., has been peaceful and 4.8% voter turnout has been recorded.

Voting is being held for all the 117 Assembly seats in a single phase with 1,304 candidates, including 93 women and two transgenders, in the fray. Among those contesting as many as 315 are with criminal antecedents.

Across the State, there are as many as 2,14,99,804 electorates including 1,12,98,081 men, 1,02,00,996 women and 727 transgenders. In all, 24,689 polling stations and 51 auxiliary polling stations have been established at 14,684 polling station locations of which 2,013 have been identified as critical, while 2,952 are vulnerable pockets.

In the high-stakes battle for Punjab, the ruling Congress is trying hard to defend its turf, the Aam Aadmi Party has emerged as the main challenger, the Shiromani Akali Dal is seeking to make a political comeback with a new alliance partner – the Bahujan Samaj Party – while the Bharatiya Janata Party has tied up with former Chief Minister Captain (Retd.) Amarinder Singh’s Punjab Lok Congress.