Congress will emerge single largest party: Exit poll
New Delhi, September 26: The exit poll conducted by Marathi newspaper Lokmat has predicted that the Congress and its allies have emerged as the single largest group with 201 Lok Sabha seats, surpassing the National Democratic Alliance's (NDA) 200 after Saturday's penultimate round of Lok Sabha polling.
The poll conducted by Lokmat-IMS-CMCR had predicted 201 seats for Congress and its allies against 200 seats for the BJP and its allies. The reasons cited are the slide in the fortunes for the NDA in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh and improved chances for the Congress. A Lokmat-IMS-CMCR release said that in the fourth round of polling, Congress allies will secure 42 out of 74 seats that went to polling on September 25. The study claims that BJP's allies in the NDA continue to retain their tally of 70 Lok Sabha seats while the BJP suffered a loss of 30 seats it held in 1998.
The BJP, the studies said, will have to be contented with 29 seats in Uttar Pradesh against its tally of 43 of 54 seats in 1998. The Congress and Rashtriya Lok Dal are expected to pick up eight of 24 seats that went to polls on Saturday. The Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party are expected to mop up the remaining four seats.
The NDA is expected to be ahead of its rivals in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Haryana, Karnataka, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh while the Congress will 'open its account' in a big way in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh.
The exit poll was conducted in 83 constituencies with a sample base of 19,875 voters in 11 states in all the four phases.
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