Thiruvananthapuram, April 13 (IANS) Voting is under way across Kerala to elect a 140-member assembly.

 
 Moderate to lengthy queues were seen in almost all the polling booths and 4.5 percent of the state's voters had cast their votes at the end of the first hour of polling, according to election officials.
 
 Polling began at 7 a.m. across the state and would close at 5 p.m.
 
 Palakkad district witnessed around seven percent voting while Kollam district registered only around 3.4 percent.
 
 About 22 million people are eligible to vote and there are 971 candidates in the fray.
 The main contest is between the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF).
 
 There are 20,758 polling booths in the state and around 3,703 booths have been identified as sensitive ones.