21.22 per cent voting in Allahabad till 11 AM

The fate of close to 200 candidates will be decided by more than four million voters.

Prominent among those to have cast their votes in the city were West Bengal Governor Keshri Nath Tripathi, Uttar Pradesh BJP president Keshav Prasad Maurya and the party's national secretary Siddharth Nath Singh.

No untoward incident was reported from any of the 4327 polling booths across the district so far.

About 30,000 security personnel have been deployed at polling centres to deal with any law and order situation.

At some places EVMs reported technical snags which were promptly taken care of.

Residents of a village in remote Shankargarh block of the trans-Yamuna region were persuaded to call off boycott of voting with the assurance that their grievances will be duly addressed.

Attempts of the state's ruling Samajwadi Party to stave off anti-incumbency with the help of an image make-over and a last-minute alliance with the Congress faces a litmus test in the district where it has dropped four sitting MLAs and given up one of the seats held by it in favour of the ally.

The BJP's efforts to revive itself in the state with the help of careful caste calculations and aggressive poaching of "winnable" faces play out in the district.

The party has left two seats for its ally Apna Dal which enjoys influence among the Kurmis, the most prominent non-Yadav OBC group in the state.

Besides, in at least three of the seats the BJP has fielded candidate turncoats from other parties.

The BSP, which has aimed at winning over the Muslims in a big way in the ongoing assembly polls, is contesting all the 12 seats in the district.

Three of its candidates here belong to the minority community.