Rahul Gandhi's fate in Wayanad at stake as Kerala votes for 20 seats

Thiruvananthapuram: Polling in all the 20 Lok Sabha seats in Kerala for the 2024 general election commenced at 7am on Friday.

People started arriving early in the morning at the over 25,000 polling booths in the state to avoid the hot weather that was likely as the day progressed.

Polling was carried out amidst tight security arrangements which included deployment of over 66,000 security personnel and live monitoring of the election process by an extensive webcasting system.

Voting began after a mock poll was carried out by casting votes in favour of all candidates, inlcuding NOTA, whose names are there on an EVM.

A minimum of 50 votes were cast in the mock poll as per the instructions of the Election Commission and after clearing the EVMs, actual polling commenced.

Around 2.77 crore voters will decide the fate of the 194 candidates who are contesting from the 20 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state.

Two union ministers, most of the sitting MPs including Congress scion Rahul Gandhi, a state minister, three actors and a few MLAs are among the total candidates who tried their political luck this time in Kerala which saw highly active and aggressive poll campaigns by the CPI(M)-led ruling LDF, Congress-headed UDF, and the BJP-led NDA.

Rahul Gandhi won from Wayanad with a record margin of 4,31,770 votes during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Kerala BJP chief K Surendran Surendran is in contest against Gandhi and CPI leader Annie Raja in the hill constituency.