Islamabad: Polling has begun in historic Pakistan elections to decide the fate of 23,000 candidates who stayed on despite a volatile run-up that saw more than 130 people being killed in a series of terror attacks and former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilanis son being abducted.

Millions of Pakistanis are expected to vote in the elections for 342 seats of the National Assembly and 728 seats in the four Provincial Assemblies.

The landmark Parliamentary Elections will elect a new civilian government for the next five years.

The 20-day election campaign ended at midnight on Thursday.

Polling began at 8 am local time and will continue until 5 pm without any break.

In a bloody campaign marred by Taliban attacks, a former cricket star has been pitted against a two-time prime minister once exiled by the Army and an incumbent blamed for power blackouts and inflation.

The vote marks the first time in Pakistans 65-year history that a civilian government has completed its full term and handed over power in democratic elections. Previous governments have been toppled by military coups or sacked by presidents allied with the powerful Army.

To add to the anxiety levels, star leader and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf chief Imran Khan suffered serious injuries after a fall in an election rally in Lahore on Tuesday.

Chief Election Commissioner Fakhruddin G Ebrahim said on Friday all arrangements were in place for free, fair and transparent elections.

“The power of vote can change destiny of the nation,” he said.

The election campaign ended with mainstream parties holding big public meetings in the capital Islamabad and the eastern city of Lahore.

The Election Commissions data shows that a total of 23,079 candidates are in the fray for the National Assembly and Provincial Assembly seats. The country of 180 million will 84 million voters, including 36 million women, will exercise their franchise.

Deadly violence struck again on Friday, with a pair of bombings against election offices in northwest Pakistan that killed three people and a shooting that killed a candidate in the southern city of Karachi. Most attacks have been traced to Taliban militants, who have vowed to disrupt a democratic process they say runs counter to Islam.

The vote is being watched closely by Washington since the US relies on the nuclear-armed country of 180 million people for help in fighting Islamic militants and negotiating an end to the war in neighbouring Afghanistan.

The rise of former cricket star Imran Khan, who has almost mythical status in Pakistan, has challenged the dominance of the countrys two main political parties, making the outcome of the election very hard to call.

There is concern that the violence could benefit Islamist parties and those who take a softer line toward the militants, including Khan and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, because they were able to campaign more freely. The government plans to deploy 600,000 security personnel on election day.

The two main parties that have dominated politics — the Pakistan Peoples Party, which led the most recent government, and Sharifs Pakistan Muslim League-N — have ruled the country a total of five times in the past 25 years.

A poll released this week by a Pakistani political magazine, Herald, showed the two parties led by Sharif and Khan as basically tied, with about 25 percent support each. The Pakistan Peoples Party was third with about 18 percent. The margin of error was less than three percentage points. But national polls like this do not necessarily reflect election results because seats are granted to whoever gets the most votes per constituency, rather than proportionally across the parties.

Even if the Pakistan Muslim League-N wins the most National Assembly seats, many analysts doubt it will have a majority, meaning it would have to cobble together a ruling coalition that could be quite weak.

The performance of the Pakistan Muslim League-N could be heavily influenced by how well Khans party does.

The Army is expected to play a similarly predominant role when it comes to Pakistans stance toward domestic Taliban militants at war with the state. Both Sharif and Khan have backed negotiations with the Taliban, and Khan has even said he would pull troops out from the tribal region who are battling the militants.

His nickname “Taliban Khan” reflects sentiments among some Pakistanis that he is too soft on the Taliban.