)
The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance coalition could get a majority in the Lok Sabha, the India Today-CICERO exit poll said on Monday.
It said at the end of the staggered Lok Sabha election that the BJP-led NDA could get 272 seats, the Congress-led UPA 115 and other parties 156 seats.
Exit polls almost unanimously predict the end of the Congress-led UPA’s 10-year rule in India and return of the BJP-led NDA, attesting that its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s strategy focusing the polls on himself has paid off.
The NewsX-CVoter survey sees the BJP getting as many as 251 seats. This would be the saffron party’s best ever showing in the Lok Sabha polls. The party had won 182 seats in 1998 and 1999.
The survey sees the UPA getting a drubbing, managing just 101 seats, down from the 262 it had achieved five years ago.
Monday saw a key index of the Bombay Stock Exchange closing at an all-time high, just before exit polls started pouring in, gaining over 550 points or nearly 2.5 percent intra-day.
The BJP said the exit polls were on expected lines. Its leaders insisted that the party was sure to get a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha.
"Wherever we went during campaigning, it was clear that people wanted a change (in government)," party leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said. "They also wanted Modi to lead the country."
A dispirited Congress did not accept defeat, but a party leader, Rashid Alvi, said rising food prices certainly worked against the Congress all across the country.
The exit polls gave the BJP and its allies far more seats than the Congress-led UPA in northern, western and central India. Only some parts of the country's south held hope for the Congress.
ABP News-Nielsen said the BJP would make huge gains in the populous states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra which together account for 168 crucial Lok Sabha seats.
According to it, the NDA would get 46 of the 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh, from where Modi is fighting one of his two Lok Sabha elections. The BJP and its ally LJP could get 21 of the 40 seats in neighbouring Bihar.
In Maharashtra, the BJP (21) and its ally Shiv Sena (11) were poised to net 32 of the 48 seats, leaving the Congress bruised in all three states.
A fourth exit poll, on CNN-IBN, said the BJP was expected to do unusually well in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu where traditionally it has been weak.
The BJP could win 1-3 of West Bengal's 42 Lok Sabha seats. The ruling Trinamool Congress could win 25-31, leaving the Left at a distant second (7-11) followed by the Congress (2-4).
In Tamil Nadu, the ruling AIADMK was projected to win 22-28 of the 39 seats, followed by the DMK (7-11) and the BJP (4-6). The Congress would be routed, CNN-IBN said.
The BJP was also ahead of the Congress in Haryana, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, exit polls said.
The exit poll results of the 15th Lok Sabha in 2009 were close to the projection lines. However, predictions of the 2004 elections were off with the exit-poll favourite NDA securing only 187 seats against the estimates of over 240 to 250 seats.
Support for the Congress-led coalition government has been undermined by a string of corruption scandals, surging food price and a sharply slowing economy during its decade in power.
Modi on Monday urged the electorate to vote in large numbers. His appeal, telecast by television news channels, triggered an immediate protest from the AAP which called it a violation of the model code of conduct.
