Polling in the three Provincial Council elections to the North Central, Sabaragamuwa and Eastern Provinces started at 7.00 a.m. today. Brisk polling is reported from all the areas and voters are reported to have queued up since early morning to cast their votes.

There are 3.36 million eligible voters in the three provinces to elect 108 provincial council members. There are 3073 candidates in the fray. 1619 of them are candidates from registered political parties and 1454 are independent candidates.

There are 895 polling booths in the North Central Province, 1189 in the Sabaragamuwa Province, and 1163 in the Eastern Province.

Several thousand election monitors have been deployed by the election monitoring organizations. PAFFREL alone has assigned 2000 monitors in all the three provinces.

Counting of postal votes is expected to begin at 5.00 pm and the first district based postal vote result is expected be announced around 10.00 pm tonight. The Elections Commissioner hopes to declare district results by 6.00 am tomorrow.