A voter turnout of 20 per cent was recorded during the first four hours in the four Lok Sabha seats in Assam where elections were underway in the third phase on Tuesday.
Guwahati recorded a turnout of 16.62%, followed by 16.01% in Barpeta, 25.51% in Dhubri and 19.65% in Kokrajhar respectively.
The polling, which began at 7 am, would continue till 5 pm.
A total of 81,77,207 eligible voters, out of which 41,27,099 are male voters, 40,84,130 are female voters and 112 third gender voters will decide the fate of 47 candidates in the fray.
Voting is underway in 9,516 polling stations.
The highest number of candidates are in Barpeta where 14 contestants are in the fray, while Guwahati has the lowest number of candidates at 8.
12 candidates are contesting in Kokrajhar, 14 in Barpeta and 13 in Dhubri.
Both, NDA (BJP, AGP and UPPL) and the Congress have fielded candidates in all four seats.
In the Guwahati seat, the BJP and Congress have fielded women candidates and also newcomers. Bijuli Kalita Medhi is contesting on a BJP ticket from Guwahati, the Congress has fielded Mira Barthakur Goswami.
BJP’s ally Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) is contesting from the Barpeta (candidate- Phani Bhushan Choudhury) and Dhubri (candidate- Javed Islam) seats.
UPPL’s Joyanta Basumatary is contesting from Kokrajhar seat against former BTC Deputy Chief of Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) and Bodoland Peoples Front (BPF) leader Kampa Borgoyary and 10 others.
In the Dhubri seat, All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) Chief and incumbent Dhubri Lok Sabha MP Badruddin Ajmal is up against former Assam cabinet minister and 5-time MLA Rakibul Hussain of the Congress and 10 others.
In the Barpeta seat, it is expected to be a triangular fight between NDA consensus candidate Phani Bhushan Choudhury of the AGP, Deep Bayan of the Congress and Manoranjan Talukdar of the CPI-M (Marxist).
A total of 126 nominations were received in the 4 parliamentary seats, out of which only 52 were found to be valid. However, 5 candidates withdrew their nominations reducing the total number of contesting candidates to 47.
