The Hindu : National : BJP feels positive despite exit polls

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 28, 2004

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National

BJP feels positive despite exit polls

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, APRIL 27. Whatever the loss of Lok Sabha seats for the Bharatiya Janata Party and the National Democratic Alliance as projected by the exit polls on Monday, the BJP's own assessment places it and the NDA ahead by 12 seats at 186 (as against 174 seats in 1999) of a total of 276 seats for which polling has been completed in two phases.

Though the party president, Venkaiah Naidu, said today that the competition in Andhra Pradesh was "close" and "closer" than the party had thought earlier, the BJP is not yet in the mood to write off the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and staunch friend of five years standing, Chandrababu Naidu. Both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister talked to him today and the BJP's assessment is that in the second round in which elections for 21 Lok Sabha seats were held in the State, the BJP and the Telugu Desam Party should win 12, making that just above the 50 per cent mark. The NDTV exit polls had given only three to the TDP and the BJP as against 18 to the Congress and its allies.

In Karnataka, the BJP's expectation is that of the 13 seats for which polling was held on Monday, the BJP and its ally, the Janata Dal (United) would have secured 10 as against only 3 seats they had won earlier. It is in Bihar that the "tally" of the exit polls for the NDA is very much short of the BJP's own assessment of winning 16 of a total 17 seats that went to the polls on Monday. The exit polls have predicted that the BJP and its allies would lose seven to eight seats. In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP has not lost hope, it seems. It has given itself 12 of the 32 seats for which elections were held on Monday as against 13 it had earlier. The exit polls had varied in their estimation from about eight to 11 seats for the BJP.

Mr. Venkaiah Naidu said that overall, the BJP had expected to make substantial gains in Karnataka, Assam and Uttar Pradesh. In the first two States, the exit polls were going in the party's favour, while most of U.P. was still to go to the polls.

All the exit polls, without exception, show losses (as against the 1999 Lok Sabha results) for the BJP and its allies in the first and second phase of polling, but the party has estimated that it has gained 12 seats. The picture will become clear only on May 13 when the ballots are counted.

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