Chandigarh, Polling for 25 out of 26 wards of the Chandigarh municipal corporation election began Wednesday morning.

Not many voters could be seen outside polling stations in the city's residential sectors though the polling booths in and around the city's slums and rehabilitation centres saw many voters turning up to cast their franchise.

The main contest is between the ruling Congress and the Bharatiya Janta Party-Shiromani Akali Dal combine. Some independents are also expected to give a good fight.

The election to ward number 7 was countermanded early December as one of the contesting candidates died. The election in this ward would now be held next month.

While the city and its villages have over 557,000 registered voters out of a total population of over a million, not even half of them are expected to cast their votes. All offices, commercial establishments and industries in the city were closed to enable people to cast their vote.

In the previous municipal election in 2001, only 30-32 per cent voters had cast their votes, indicating waning interest in the corporation that was set up in 1996 to look after the civic interests of the city that is the capital of both Punjab and Haryana.