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EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE
NEW DELHI, OCT 3: The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is poised to form the next Government at the Centre, according to exit polls conducted Sunday evening by Doordarshan-DRS, Star TV-Insight and Jain TV. A fourth poll, by Lokmat-CMR-IMS, has, however, predicted a hung Parliament.
The Star-Insight has predicted seats in the range of 295-305 for the NDA, and 145-155 for the Congress and its allies. On the other hand, the Doordarshan-DRS has predicted 287 for the NDA and 174 for the Congress-led alliance. But both agree that the gains to the BJP and Congress will be at the cost of ``other'' players.
Insight poll has shied away from predicting the individual seats for the two main players, the BJP and the Congress. But DRS holds that the BJP is well on its way to becoming the single largest party with 185 seats while the Congress will manage 146.
Barring Lokmat, the assessments of the other two polls show that UP, long thought to spring a surprise against the BJP because of the perceivedanti-Kalyan wave, would benefit Congress but not to an extent the party would have hoped. DRS says the Congress will gain 14 seats , primarily at the expense of the BJP which will lose 13 seats and end with 46. The Insight poll, on the other hand, has given a comparatively comfortable 48-52 seats to the BJP, and 8-12 to the Congress and allies.
DRS holds that the Samajwadi Party would lose ground in the UP, it has given 16 seats to Mulayam Singh Yadav's outfit . Surprising, Star-Insight clubbed both the SP and its keen rival BSP together and put them in the range of 23-27. Bihar will be another surprise, but for a different reason. The NDA, expecting some sort of a huge anti-Laloo Prasad Yadav wave, is in for a bitter disappointment, the exit-polls claim. The DRS poll still gives 20 seats to the Congress-RJD combine, while the BJP-JD(U) alliance is seen to have increased its seats by four to bring the new tally to 34. The Insight's prediction for Bihar are more or less similar: 27-31 for the NDA and 19-22for the Congress-RJD.
Star-Insight also chose to keep an escape route open, as was evident in its decision to give out the range rather than the exact figure. The explanation by the pollster was that as they had completed the polling by 2.30 pm (as against 4.30 pm by DRS).
The DRS has predicted a loss of 10 seats for the Left Front; according to it, its tally will be down from 33 to 23, and a gain of eight seats for Trinamool and BJP. But the Insight prediction had a range of 29-33 for the Left and 8-11 for Trinamool-BJP, sufficient to account for any unexplained tilt for the 42-seat strong state.
DRS did not have a word on Assam or Orissa that went to polls on Sunday. The Insight's prediction, on the other hand, shows that all the major players will more or less repeat their performance in these two states. While it has given 8-11 seats to Congress, and 2-4 to the BJP in Assam, it says that in Orissa the BJP and allies will maintain the last election's lead by capturing 17-19 out of 21 seats in thestate.
According to the Lokmat poll, the NDA will bag 242 seats, the Congress and allies 167, but both will fall short of a simple majority.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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