New Delhi: Polling for Lok Sabha elections ended today (May 10, 2004) with an estimated 45 to 50 per cent of the 25.25 crore electorate voting in the fourth and final phase for 182 seats in 16 States and Union Territories amidst sporadic violence which claimed three lives and injured several others.

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Counting of votes for all the 543 Lok Sabha seats for which elections began on April 20 would be taken up on Thursday (May 13) and the results are expected the same day. Exit polls have predicted a hung House.

Simultaneously Assembly elections were held in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Orissa and Sikkim.

However, in view of the need to immediately constitute the new Andhra Pradesh Assembly, which has 294 members, the counting of votes in the State will be taken up tomorrow (May 11).

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The polling in all the four phases has been by and large peaceful. Poll related violence claimed 35 lives mainly in Bihar, Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir, where despite militant threat voter turnout was moderate.

The final round which had the largest number of seats decided the electoral fate of 2,132 candidates prominent among them being CPI (M) veteran Somnath Chatterjee (Bolpur), Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker P M Sayeed (Lakshadweep), Union Ministers Jagmohan (New Delhi), B C Khanduri (Garhwal), Mamata Banerjee (Kolkata-South), Satyanarayan Jatiya (Ujjain), Sahib Singh Verma (Outer Delhi), I D Swami (Karnal) and Vijay Goel (Delhi-Sadar).