Battle lines are clearly drawn between the ruling NDA and the Opposition INDIA bloc as the world’s largest electoral exercise gets underway on Friday with the first phase of voting in the 18th Lok Sabha elections in 102 constituencies spread over 21 states and Union territories.

The voting is scheduled to commence at 7 am across 1.87 lakh polling stations, manned by more than 18 lakh polling officials, amid tight security to avert any untoward incident. The voting will culminate at 6 pm.

More than 16.63 crore voters will decide the fate of 1,625 candidates, including 134 women candidates. The eligible voters include 8.4 crore men, 8.23 crore women, and 11,371 third-gender electors. The number of first-time voters is 35.67 lakh.

Of the 102 Lok Sabha seats going to polls in the first phase, 39 are from Tamil Nadu, 12 from Rajasthan, eight from Uttar Pradesh, six from Madhya Pradesh, and four are from Bihar.

The northeastern states that will go to polls in the first phase include Assam with five seats; Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, and Meghalaya with two seats each; and Tripura, Mizoram, Sikkim, and Nagaland with one seat each.

The prominent BJP candidates in the fray include Union ministers Nitin Gadkari, Sarbananda Sonowal, Kiren Rijiu, Jitendra Singh; Tamil Nadu BJP chief K Annamalai; and Uttar Pradesh minister Jitin Prasada. Gadkari is contesting from Maharashtra’s Nagpur, Sonowal from Assam’s Dibrugarh, Rijiju from Arunachal Pradesh’s West, Singh from Jammu and Kashmir’s Udhampur, Prasada from Pilibhit and Annamalai from Coimbatore seats.

The heavyweights from Congress who are contesting the polls in this phase include its deputy leader in the Lok Sabha Gaurav Gogoi, and Nakul Nath, son of former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath. The party fielded Gogoi from the Jorhat parliamentary seat in Assam and Nakul from Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh.

Other prominent candidates in the poll fray include former Bihar chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi. He is contesting as a Hindustani Awam Morcha-Secular (HAM-S) candidate from Bihar’s Gaya.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission said it has taken a slew of decisive measures for peaceful and smooth conduct of the election. “Central forces have been deployed adequately at polling stations to secure the polling process. Webcasting will be done in more than 50 per cent of the polling stations along with deployment of micro observers in all polling stations,” it said.

The poll panel informed that 361 observers (127 general observers, 67 police observers, and 167 expenditure observers) had already reached their respective constituencies days before the polls. Additionally, special observers have been deployed in certain states.

A total of 4,627 flying squads, 5,208 statistics surveillance teams, 2,028 video surveillance teams, and 1,255 video viewing teams are keeping round-the-clock surveillance to deal with any form of inducement of voters strictly and swiftly, it added.

Assembly elections will be held simultaneously in Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim on Friday.