Major international news channels including "British Broadcasting Corporation" (BBC), "Al Jazeera" and "Reuters" are covering the Maldivian presidential election, which commenced this morning at 8 AM GMT+5.
Several prominent news agencies from foreign countries such as Fox News of America and The Times of India are also reporting on the election and key events that led up to it.
Maldives election: Voting begins in controversial poll https://t.co/oTgbo14wdl— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) September 23, 2018
The Elections Commission (EC) has given permission to 26 observers from 14 different media outlets to report on the election, including those from New York Times, Agence France Presse (AFP) and Associated Press (AP).
While several nations have expressed concerns regarding the fairness of the presidential election in the months leading up to it, there were reports that some foreign observers had faced difficulty in obtaining their visas.
Maldives Immigration attributed visa issues to payments that had not been made in time by the sponsoring organisations.
More than 262,000 individuals are eligible to vote in the on-going election and a total of 472 ballot boxes have been placed across Maldives as well as other countries hosting significant populations of Maldivians, including Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia and the United Kingdom.