Chandigarh, April 30 (IANS) Balloting began Wednesday in Punjab for all its 13 Lok Sabha seats that went to the polls in a single phase, officials said.

Prominent candidates are Akali Dal’s Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Bharatiya Janata Party’s Arun Jaitley, Congress’s Amarinder Singh, and three-time BJP MP, actor Vinod Khanna.

As many as 253 candidates are in the fray.

People queued up at polling stations even before 7 a.m.

A total of 234,011 poll officials have been deployed.

The Election Commission is expecting a voter turnout of 80 percent this time. In the 2009 election, Punjab had recorded over 70 percent polling.

Over 75,000 police and paramilitary personnel have been stationed across the state to ensure peaceful polling, said Director General of Police Suresh Arora.

Punjab has 13,582 polling stations and 22,060 polling booths. Out of these, 2,442 polling stations have been declared hyper-sensitive and 4,632 sensitive, Arora said.