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Thursday, Oct 14, 2004

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National

Exit polls favour Congress-NCP

By Our New Delhi Bureau

Women complaining about the non-inclusion of their names in the voters' list at a polling booth in Ramabai Nagar, North Mumbai, on Wednesday. — Photo: Vivek Bendre

NEW DELHI, OCT. 13. NEW DELHI, OCT. 13. Barring just one television news network, the exit poll forecast gave the ruling Congress-Nationalist Congress Party a second turn at the office. Exit polls for the keenly-watched Maharashtra Assembly elections projected the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance to be ahead of the Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena combine.

Of the four news networks — NDTV, Aaj TaK, Star and Zee — two of the three exit polls gave a clear majority to the ruling combine. One projected the current Democratic Front being 20 seats short of a simple majority but ahead of the BJP-led combine by 10 seats while the NDTV projections indicated that the BJP-Sena combine would bag between 115-145 seats as against 111-135 for the Congress-led alliance.

"Others" shine

For the first time the "others'', which include the Bahujan Samaj Party of Ms. Mayawati, were estimated to have garnered a sizeable number of seats — the exit polls show varied figures ranging from 20 to 48 seats — to possibly emerge as the deciding factor in Government formation in the event of the Congress-NCP failing to reach a bare majority of 145 in an Assembly of 288 seats. Of the four exit polls, two estimated that the Congress-NCP alliance would come out ahead.

While Star and Aaj Tak gave a clear majority to the ruling combination, Zee showed it to be ahead but short of the majority mark. The NDTV put the tally anywhere between 111-135 for the ruling coalition and between 115-145 for the BJP-Sena combine.

If the Zee News exit poll is correct then the Congress-NCP would get 125 seats as against the BJP-Shiv Sena's 115 while as many as 48 seats will be cornered by "others''.

The Congress-NCP alliance was projected to get 140-150 by Aaj Tak; 149 seats by Star; and 125 seats by Zee News. The BJP-Sena combine was estimated to get 100-110 seats by Aaj Tak; 119 by Star and 115 by Zee News on the basis of their exit polls. The projections for the "others'' category were 20 (Star); 30-40 (Aaj Tak),48 (Zee News) and 30-45 (NDTV).

In the 1999 Assembly polls in the State, the Congress and the NCP together had 147 seats, the BJP-Sena 125 and "others'' won 16. Of course, the Congress and NCP had fought against each other in that election only to come together to form the Government after the results. The NCP president, Sharad Pawar, had been expelled from the Congress just before the Assembly election, which coincided with the Lok Sabha election that year.

Loses ground

The predictions suggest that the Congress, as expected, has indeed lost ground in its traditional Vidarbha bastion, possibly because "others'' have eaten into its vote-share.

Take, for example the projection by Aaj Tak which has given "others'' as many as 12-16 of the 66 seats in this backward region of the State which was in the news for suicide by cotton farmers. Almost all the three exit polls have predicted between 30-35 seats for the BJP-led alliance and between 16 and 30 for the Congress-led combine.

NDTV put it in a range of 28-32 for the Congress-plus and 26-30 for BJP-plus. The prosperous sugar-belt in Western Maharashtra, where undoubtedly Mr. Pawar has held sway for decades, could see the Congress-NCP holding its ground if the exit polls are to be believed. Aaj Tak and Star gave this coalition around 50 seats although Zee was more cautious at 37.

The BJP-Sena alliance was projected to get 25 by Zee;14-18 by Aaj Tak; and 12 seats by Star. The NDTV said the Congress-led alliance gets 43-47 seats as against 14-18 for the BJP-led force.

In Mumbai, where the Cong-NCP had recently swept the Lok Sabha poll much to the chagrin of the Sena, the prediction for the Assembly elections pegged them down to 16 to 24 seats as against 10 to 17 for the BJP-Sena combine. In the rest of the regions of Marathwada, Konkan and North Maharashtra the gap between the two rival alliances was predicted to be smaller.

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