First phase of assembly polls in Jharkhand Tuesday

Over three million voters will Tuesday decide the political fate of 199 candidates who are in the fray in the first phase of assembly elections in Jharkhand's Maoist-hit areas.

In the first phase, 13 of the 81 assembly constituencies will go to the polls under heavy security in the view of Maoist threat.

"All security arrangements have been completed. Four choppers will be used for air surveillance. The state and central security forces have been deployed in large number," a police official told IANS.

A total of 32,59,536 voters will cast their votes in 3,939 polling stations in the first phase.

A total of 1,612 were declared as model polling stations while webcasting will be done from 263 polling stations. Besides, around 1,752 polling stations were declared as super sensitive and 1,104 as sensitive.

Polling starts at 7 a.m. and ends at 3 p.m. Tuesday.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and the Bahujan Samaj Party are fighting the polls in 12 constituencies each, the Congress in seven and its alliance partner the Rashtriya Janata Dal in six constituencies.

The prominent candidates whose fate will be decided in this phase are state Congress president Sukhdeo Bhagat, Anant Pratap Deo, who switched to the BJP from the Congress, and former minister and Janata Dal-United candidate Sudha Chowdhary.

The assembly elections in Jharkhand will be held in five phases between Nov 25 and Dec 20.