Nearly 66 percent voter turnout was recorded in the third phase of the Lok Sabha polls on Tuesday, the Election Commission said. In the third phase, voting was held in 116 Lok Sabha seats, including all constituencies in Gujarat and Kerala, with BJP president Amit Shah, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi and several Union ministers among prominent candidates in the fray.

Voter turnout in the third phase of the Lok Sabha elections is 65.61 percent till 8.00 pm, a mobile application launched by the EC said.

This phase will decide the fate of the heads of the BJP and Congress -- Amit Shah, who replaced LK Advani as the party nominee from Gandhinagar in Gujarat, and Rahul Gandhi, who is contesting from Wayanad in Kerala besides his traditional Amethi seat in Uttar Pradesh.

This was by far the biggest phase in terms of constituencies. In the first two phases, election was held to 91 and 95 seats on April 11 and April 18 respectively. Election to 543 seats is being held in seven phases. The counting of votes will be on May 23.

The third phase of polls was marred with violence in West Bengal where a person was hacked to death in Murshidabad.

In Kerala, 11 deaths, all due to 'natural' reasons, were reported, Deputy Election Commissioner Sudip Jain told reporters here. He said, out of the total 2.81 lakh ballot units deployed, 1593 were replaced. Similarly, out of 2.11 lakh control units, 1225 were replaced.

Of total 2.11 lakh paper trail machines, 4725 were replaced, Jain said. He said this was by far the biggest deployment of paper trail machines since the concept was introduced after a Supreme Court directive in 2013.

"When a control unit or a ballot unit is replaced, the paper trail machines have to be replaced along with it. Thus the higher number of replacements," Jain said. At least one control unit and one ballot unit make up for an electronic voting machine.

Among other prominent candidates in this phase are Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav (Mainpuri-Uttar Pradesh), Congress MP Shashi Tharoor and former Governor and BJP nominee Kummanam Rajasekharan (Thiruvananthapuram-Kerala), and AIUDF chief Badruddin Ajmal (Dhubri-Assam).

All seats in Gujarat (26), Kerala (20), Goa (2), Dadra and Nagar Haveli (1) and Daman and Diu (1) went to polls in the third of the seven-phase election.

Besides, polling was also held in four seats in Assam, five in Bihar, seven in Chhattisgarh, one in Jammu and Kashmir, 14 in Karnataka, 14 in Maharashtra, six in Odisha, 10 in Uttar Pradesh, and five in West Bengal.

Voting in Tripura East constituency, which was earlier scheduled for April 18, was also held in the 3rd phase. Polling is being held in a part of the Anantnag Lok Sabha seat in Jammu and Kashmir, where election is being held in three phases.

Lok Sabha election 2019 phase 3 highlights: