Guwahati: Polling for the Nagaon Lok Sabha constituency by-election began at 7 am on Tuesday, with more than 19 lakh voters eligible to cast their ballots across the constituency to determine the outcome for 15 candidates.
Voting will continue until 5 pm at 2,112 polling stations, including five auxiliary stations, five model polling stations and 335 women-managed booths. Webcasting has been enabled at all polling stations to allow authorities to monitor the voting process in real time.
The bypoll has turned into a three-cornered contest between BJP candidate Devashish Sharma, Congress nominee Sibamoni Bora and AIUDF president Badruddin Ajmal.
Sharma, a former Nagaon district commissioner, took voluntary retirement from government service before entering electoral politics and is making his electoral debut. Bora is a former legislator from the erstwhile Batadroba constituency, while Ajmal, the sitting MLA from Binnakandi, is seeking a return to Parliament.
The by-election was necessitated by the resignation of former Congress MP Pradyut Bordoloi, who subsequently joined the BJP and contested the Dispur Assembly constituency, which he won.
Of the 19,02,009 registered voters, 9,58,595 are men, 9,43,364 are women and 50 are third-gender voters.
The administrations of Nagaon and Morigaon have deployed extensive security and administrative arrangements to ensure a free and fair polling process.
As many as 9,664 polling personnel have been assigned election duties, supported by 86 micro-observers, along with 69 Flying Squad Teams (FSTs) and 69 Static Surveillance Teams (SSTs).
Meanwhile, eligible voters aged above 85 years and persons with disabilities had already exercised their franchise through home-based postal voting under Section 60(C) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951.
The polling authorities have put in place multiple monitoring and security mechanisms as voting gets underway across the constituency.