Polling began at 7 am on Monday morning amid tight security measures in the Rae Bareli Lok Sabha constituency from where Congress president Sonia Gandhi [Images] is seeking re-election.

However, voter turnout remained rather low with local officials stating that just about 20 per cent votes were polled until 11 am. The usual sight of long queues outside polling centres was missing this time.

While some attributed the low turnout to the heat wave that was currently lashing large parts of Uttar Pradesh [Images], others believe that the absence of any matching contestant against Sonia Gandhi had led to diminishing interest of the local population.

"There is virtually no contest here as Sonia Gandhi is all set to sweep the poll," remarked Santosh Misra, a local shopkeeper in Bachrawan town, about 40 Km off Rae Bareli city.

Interestingly, Sonia's daughter Priyanka, who is also her election agent, expressed similar views. "When people can see that there are no major opponents in the fray and there is hardly any contest, they seem to lose interest and therefore do not make effort to come out and vote," Priyanka told reporters outside a polling centre in Bachrawan.

Taking a round of the entire constituency, with her local aides in tow, Priyanka went on to add that the low turnout could also be attributed to the hot weather.

However, what seemed to bother her more were reports of 'faulty' voting machines. "My party workers are complaining about defective voting machines from different parts of Rae Bareli; and that was bound to further affect the polling," she pointed out, while inquiring from a party worker whether voters had returned because of dysfunctional electronic voting machines.

Priyanka proposes to cover each of the five assembly segments of the constituency before polling concludes at 5 pm.

Around 13.60 lakh voters will decide the fate of 16 candidates.

Besides Sonia, others in the fray include Vinay Katiyar (Bharatiya Janata Party [Images]), Raj Kumar Chaudhary (Samajwadi Party) and Prabha Singh Lodhi (Apna Dal).

To ensure free and fair polling, the constituency has been divided into five super-zone, 11 zones and 85 sectors. Of the over 2100 polling stations, 300 booths have been declared sensitive and 360 others hyper-sensitive, where central paramilitary forces have been deployed in large numbers to meet any eventuality.

The borders of the constituency have also been sealed.

The by-election is being held as the seat fell vacant following Sonia's resignation in the wake of office of profit controversy. In the last Lok Sabha polls in 2004, Gandhi had trounced her nearest Samajwadi Party rival by about 2.5 lakh votes and this time Congress workers expect a bigger victory margin for her.

With PTI inputs