Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is expected to form the government at the centre, according to most exit poll results that came out on Monday evening.
According to C-Voter exit polls, Modi-led NDA is likely to win 289 seats, Congress 10, AAP 5 while others will get 148 seats.
But exit polls are just exit polls and they have been proven wrong in the past. So voters will have to wait till May 16 to know the real mandate when the results for the just concluded Lok Sabha elections will be declared.
In the previous Lok Sabha elections in 2009, Congress had won 262 seats, while NDA got 159 seats. Interestingly, the exit polls then had predicted a win for LK Advani-led NDA combine which turned out to be false.
If the prediction for 2014 turns out to be true, it would be Congress’ worst ever results.
Meanwhile, the exit poll results announced by ORG-Marg showed 249 seats for NDA and 148 seats for Rahul Gandhi-led UPA. The survey also showed 52 seats for BJP-led NDA in Uttar Pradesh.
As per CNN-IBN-Lokniti exit polls, BJP is leading and all set to form the government. It said that BJP might bag 234 seats, while Congress will have to be satisfied with only 94 seats.
On the other hand, NDTV-Hansa has predicted that BJP will win 226 seats and Congress will get 92, while ABP Nielsen exit polls showed that BJP is expected to get 217, while Congress will get only 73 seats.
Another poll by Cicero for India Today group has made predictions that BJP-led NDA will get somewhere between 261 and 283 seats.
The five-week staggered voting in India—the world's largest democratic exercise in which 815 million voters gave their mandate—ended on Monday.
In recent days, India’s stock market hit record highs on hopes that the exit polls would predict the NDA winning a majority of seats in the country.
On Monday, the Nifty crossed 7,000 points for the first time, breaking a record high of 6,871.35 that it hit on Friday. BSE Sensex also hit an all-time high to 23,551.00 points.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)
