Thiruvananthapuram: A housewife, who came to cast her vote in Chokli in Kannur, collapsed while she was standing in queue to cast her vote and died.  The deceased has been identified as Vijaya (64) of Maroli. The body of Vijaya was moved to Indira Gandhi Hospital. Around the same time, another death was witnessed at a polling booth in Vadasserikkara. The deceased has been identified as Chacko Mathai from Pezhumpara.

Ernakulam native Thresya Kutty (72), Mavelikkara native Prabhakaran (74) and Kollam native Mani (63) also died after they reached polling booths to cast their vote today (April 23).

Voting across 20 Lok Sabha seats in Kerala have commenced. A total of 2,61,51,534 voters will exercise their right to vote in the state. Among them 1,34,66,521 are women, 1,26,84,839 men and 174 are transgenders.

On April 18, a polling officer died of heart attack, when he was travelling to a poll booth in Chamarajanagar, Karnataka. The victim, 53-year-old Shanthamurthy, was on election duty in the Chamarajanagar reserved Lok Sabha constituency at the Urdu Primary School poll booth number 48. He was the principal of GVK College in Hanur. On Thursday, Karnataka’s 14 Parliamentary constituencies went to polls. The remaining 14 will vote on April 23.

A total of 13 states and two union territories including Gujarat (26 constituencies), Kerala (20), Karnataka (14), Maharashtra (14), Uttar Pradesh (10) Bihar (5), West Bengal (5) Assam (4), Chhattisgarh (7), Goa (2) Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Diu, Kashmir with one constituency each go to polls today. Polling began at 7am.