31.53% polling recorded in Haryana (2nd Lead) (1 p.m.)

Haryana on Sunday witnessed only 31.53 per cent voting till 1 p.m. for the state's 10 Lok Sabha seats, an election official said.

As of 1 p.m. the highest voter turnout was recorded in the Bhiwani-Mahendragarh seat at 37.66 per cent, followed by Sonipat, Hisar and Sirsa, the official told IANS.

Voting began at 7 a.m. for the Ambala, Kurukshetra, Gurugram, Faridabad, Hisar, Sirsa, Karnal, Sonipat, Bhiwani-Mahendragarh and Rohtak constituences.

Congress leader and sitting MP Deepender Hooda accused Minister of State for Cooperatives Manish Kumar Grover of booth capturing in Rohtak.

Long queues of voters were seen outside polling booths across the 10 seats in the morning. By the afternoon, most of the booths looked deserted as temperatures began to soar.

Election officials expect that the turnout is likely to increase just hours before polling ends at 6 p.m.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the polling percentage was 73 per cent, higher than 68 per cent in 2009.

Polling was delayed in some booths in Yamunanagar, Mahendragarh and Gohana towns due to Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) malfunctioning.

At polling booth number 84 in Gohana, the faulty EVM could not be rectified till 10 a.m., hence only two votes were cast in three hours.

Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, former Chief Minister and Congress candidate from Sonipat Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Union Ministers Rao Inderjit Singh, Krishan Pal Gurjar and Birender Singh and Indian skipper Virat Kohli were among the early voters in the state.

Khattar, who took a train from Chandigarh to Karnal city to cast his vote, appealed to the voters to participate in the world's largest festival of democracy by exercising their franchise as early as possible.

Rao Inderjit Singh, Gurjar and Hooda were among the 223 candidates, including 11 women, whose fate will be sealed by the over 1.80 crore voters.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress, the Om Prakash Chautala-led Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and its breakaway faction the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) are the main political parties in the fray.

The BJP won seven of the 10 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 with a vote share of 34.7 per cent as compared to 17.21 per cent in 2009 when it failed to win any seat.

The then ruling Congress lost eight of the nine seats it had won in 2009 and saw its vote share declining to 22.9 per cent as compared to 41.77 per cent five years back.

The INLD, which won two seats in 2014, increased its vote share to 24.4 per cent from 15.78 per cent in 2009.

--IANS

vg/ksk/bg