Around 45 per cent of the 1.76 crore electorate on Monday exercised their franchise till 2 pm in Punjab to elect the 117-member state Assembly.

"The polling percentage is up to 45 per cent till 1400 hours," Punjab's Joint Chief electoral Officer Gurkirat Kirpal Singh said here.

Even as reports of minor clashes were received from Bathinda and Ludhiana, the electoral office maintained that the polling was peaceful as no untoward incident had occurred in the state.

Reports said that some persons attacked Ludhiana's BJP Yuva Morcha general secretary Sanjay Kapoor following which he received minor injuries. As per another report, stones were pelted at the Dera Sacha Sauda office located on Amrik Singh road at Bathinda.

However, after police intervention the situation was brought under control. With the People's Party of Punjab led by former Minister, Manpreet Badal alleging tampering of some EVMs in Buddhlada, the CEO said, "there were some machines from the reserve stock being adjusted when some member from PPP thought there was some tampering going on, which was not the case".

Reports said that some machines which developed technical faults resulting in minor disruption of polling process were immediately replaced from the reserved stock. Serpentine queues were seen at different polling booths across the state, reports said.

The fate of 1,078 candidates, including two Chief Ministerial aspirants Parkash Singh Badal and Amarinder Singh in fray for 117 Assembly seats, will be sealed today. The polling is taking place at 19,841 polling stations across 22 districts of Punjab.

Prominent candidates whose fate would be sealed today include the Chief Minister from his traditional Lambi Assembly seat, his predecessor Amarinder Singh from Patiala city, their sons Sukhbir Singh Badal (Jalalabad) and Raninder Singh (Samana), former chief minister Rajinder Kaur Bhattal (Lehra), former Punjab top cop P S Gill (Moga), former Principal Secretary to the chief minister D S Guru (Bhadaur) and former SGPC chief Bibi Jagir Kaur (Bholath).

Among other prominent contestants include estranged nephew of Chief Minister, Manpreet Singh Badal from Peoples Party of Punjab from Gidderbaha and Maur, SAD's Janmeja Singh Sekhon (Maur), player-turned-politician Pargat Singh from Jalandhar cantonment on SAD ticket and doctor-turned-politician Navjot Kaur on BJP ticket.

Families of Badal and Amarinder had exercised their franchise at Lambi and Patiala city respectively.

Both SAD and Congress have exuded confidence of winning the polls and forming the next government.

A total of 70,972, including 225 paramilitary force personnel, have been deployed to conduct the elections. At least 2,627 video cameras and 554 digital cameras have been installed at polling booths. Around 203 polling stations are using live web-casting.

Of the polling stations, 2,718 have been identified hyper sensitive and 6,379 as sensitive.

Ludhiana East (16), Patiala rural (13) and Jalalabad (14) are the Assembly constituencies where maximum number of contestants are in the fray. The least number of contestants are in Attari (4).

Out of the 1,078 candidates in fray, 93 are women. At the last hustings in 2007, after scrutiny and withdrawal there were a total of 1,055 candidates including 56 women in fray.