The Free Press Journal

SIDELIGHTS

■ Chiranjeev­i, NT Rama Rao, Allu Arjun, Brahmanand­am, Nani, Jeevitha Rajasekhar, Rajendra Prasad, Naga Chaitanya, Manchu Manoj and Srikanth were among actors from the Telugu film industry who cast their vote in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

■ Rain played spoilsport in Madhya Pradesh.

■ People queue up early at polling stations in Odisha, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand to escape the heat.

■ In UP’s Bahraich, the first vote was cast by a ‘divyaang’ voter. Members of the Tharu tribe, indigenous to Nepal, also exercised their franchise in the district, which shares border with the Himalayan state.

■ In Etah, at Gautam Buddha Inter College in Aliganj tehsil, part of the Farrukhaba­d Lok Sabha constituen­cy, District Magistrate Prem Ranjan Singh took an elderly woman on a wheelchair to cast her vote.

■ Speech, hearing and visuallyim­paired Indore resident Gurdeep Kaur Vasu, 32, cast her vote at a booth in MP. This is the second time she has voted.

■ At least 70 visually impaired women in Mahesh Drihtiheen Kalyan Sangh in Indore turned up to vote, setting an example for others in the constituen­cy, which has the highest number of voters in Madhya Pradesh.

■ Divyang brand ambassador Vikram Agnihotri exercised his franchise and got his toe inked at a polling booth in Indore.

■ In Telangana’s Kodangal, a poll officer welcomed people with roses at a weddingthe­med booth. Pink booths were set up in constituen­cies.

■ There were reports of boycott from villages of Shahjahanp­ur district in UP and Odisha areas.

■ Like in the previous phases, a the elderly reached polling stations to exercise their franchise, some on wheelchair­s.

■ In J&K’s Srinagar, three Abdullah generation­s cast vote. NC president and former J&K CM Farooq Abdullah, his son Omar and his two grandsons and first-time electors Zahir and Zamir exercised their franchise.

■ People voted for the first time at their own booth at ‘Budha Pahad’ — a former Maoist hotbed in Jharkhand’s Palamu — after three decades. It was freed from the red rebels’ control by security forces.