Bihar's marathon electoral exercise

Bihar is right now going through a marathon electoral exercise - that of panchayat elections. The 10-phase three-tier panchayat polls are being held to elect a total of 1,161 members of the Zila Parishad, 11,496 members of Panchayat Samitis and mukhiyas and sarpanchs in 8,392 gram panchayats, and 114,733 members in gram panchayats and gram kutcheris in the state. The last set of polls will be on May 30, and results will be announced thereafter. Three more phases are left.

Five states await results of Assembly elections

India will have five newly elected chief ministers this week. Polling will be completed in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry on Monday and counting is scheduled for Thursday. By that evening, India should know who has won or lost in Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. In each, the winning party or alliance would hold a meeting and elect the chief of the legislature party who will then be the chief minister. The entire process should be over by the end of the week.

This evening, most news channels will telecast the results of opinion/exit polls. These will provide trends about who has the winning edge in the states which have just concluded polling. The final results will prove the accuracy of both pre-election opinion polls and exit polls.

Given below are projections made by various polling agencies before the elections started.