Bollywood celebrities, including Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan, and industry captains were among early voters to beat the afternoon heat. After a brisk start in the morning, queues at polling booths dwindled to a trickle in the afternoon as the mercury rose but voting picked up again towards the evening.
Cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar cast his vote along with wife Anjali around noon at a polling booth near their residence in suburban Bandra.
Mumbai's six seats were swept by by Congress in the last elections.
The electoral fate of three high-profile Congress candidates were settled today in Mumbai-federal minister of state Milind Deora, Priya Dutt, sister of Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt, and senior party leader Gurudas Kamat. Aam Aadmi Party's Medha Patkar, a leading environmentalist, and leading banker Meera Sanyal, BJP's Poonam Mahajan, daughter of slain party leader Pramod Mahajan, are some of the other key candidates in the fray in Mumbai.
Today's polling in UP, which saw high-profile contests involving Mulayam Singh Yadav, his daughter-in-law Dimple, wife of state chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, Salman Khurshid and film actor Hema Malini, saw a turnout of 602. per cent.
In the seven seats decided in Bihar today, the turnout was 60 percent and among key contestants are BJP's Shahnawaz Hussain in Bhagalpur and union minister Tariq Anwar of NCP.
With today's polling in Assam's six seats, Chhattisgarh's seven and Jharkhand's four, voting has been completed in the three states.
In Assam, an estimated 77.05 per cent of voters today exercised their franchise to seal the fate of 74 candidates Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who represents Assam in Rajya Sabha since 1991, and his wife Gursharan Kaur cast their vote at Dispur Government Higher Secondary School in Guwahati.
The voting percentage was expected to increase with people still inside polling booths and voting likely to continue till after 9 PM, election office sources said.
Of the six Lok Sabha seats, Dhubri recorded the highest 80.97 per cent of voter turnout followed by Mangaldoi at 80.01 per cent, Kokrajhar at 77.74 per cent, Nowgong at 75.33 per cent, Gauhati at 75 per cent and Barpeta at 74.21 per cent.
In West Bengal, 82 per cent was recorded in six parliamentary constituencies in the state's second leg of the five-phase elections in West Bengal today.
“On an average 81.42 per cent of the voters cast their votes till 6:00 pm in the six constituencies of Raiganj, Balurghat, Malda North, Malda South, Jangipur and Murshidabad in north Bengal,” Chief Electoral Officer Sunil Gupta said.
“However, there are long queues in many polling stations and the polling will continue till they are cleared. The final turnout can reach about 84 per cent,” Gupta said.
People boycotted polls in five booths, two in Malda and three in North Dinajpur districts, protesting the absence of development.
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