Polling began on Thursday amid tight security for the by-election to the Banswada assembly seat in the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh. The by-poll, fought on the strong sentiments for separate Telangana state, is being held at a time when a general strike has been on in the region for one month. By noon today, 42% precent of polling is reported to have taken place.

A large number of voters had queued up to cast their votes at 186 polling centres in 117 villages in the constituency in Nizamabad district, a stronghold of the Telangana movement. Nearly 1.60 lakh voters, half of them women, are eligible to cast their votes. The polling, which began at 8 am, will continue till 5 pm, officials said. Over 4,000 policemen have been deployed as part of the security arrangements. The counting of votes will be taken up October 17.

Though there are six candidates in the fray, it is going to be a direct fight between Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) candidate P Srinivas Reddy and the ruling Congress party's S Srinivas Goud. As state government employees continue their strike, the election authorities have drafted personnel of the central government for poll duty. As part of the large-scale arrangements to ensure free and fair polls, the officials have installed web cameras in all the polling stations.