Lucknow/New Delhi: The Samajwadi Party was most likely to take power in Uttar Pradesh amid a hung assembly, exit polls said on Saturday as staggered balloting ended in India’s most populous state with a record voting by 60 percent of its 127 million voters.
Three of four exit polls were unanimous that no one party would command a majority in the 403-member state legislature but the Samajwadi would be on top of a mainly four-horse race that began on Feb 8.
The surveys by India TV-C voter, News 24-Chanakya and Star News-Nielsen gave the Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadav between 141 and 185 seats, leaving the now ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) of Mayawati at a distant second spot.
The CNN-IBN-The Week-CSDS post poll survey did not give any figures but suggested that “a Samajwadi wave” could propel it to an outright majority.
The three surveys gave the BSP, which stunned everyone in 2007 by taking power on its own, 85 to 126 seats, far below the magical 206 seats it captured five years ago.
Congress and BJP leaders disowned the findings. The BSP was silent.
The estimated 60 million votes cast in the seven-phase election would be counted on Tuesday — along with the votes polled in Goa, Punjab, Manipur and Uttarakhand.
The exit polls are seen as bad news for the BJP but more so for Congress leading campaigner Rahul Gandhi, who had been expected to put his party on the victory lap in a state where it has been out of power since 1989.
Although elections took place in five states in February-March, most attention was focussed on Uttar Pradesh, India’s politically crucial state that has given the country a majority of its prime ministers.
The CNN-IBN survey said the Congress was poised to retain its fourth spot in Uttar Pradesh, raising questions over Gandhi’s leadership. It said the party had lost the traditional Muslim voter and failed to make inroads into the upper caste community. (IANS)