NEW DELHI: A month-long five-stage poll in India’s populous state of Bihar ended on Thursday but exit polls were divided about the verdict due on Sunday. However, most exit polls predicted defeat for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

With the end of the last hour of voting Bihar registered a record 56.8 per cent turnout.

BJP President Amit Shah said if his party lost firecrackers would go off in Pakistan, implying that Pakistanis don’t like Mr Modi. It would be interesting to see the reaction in Pakistan when the results are out.

Most exit polls gave an edge to the alliance led by Janata Dal United (JDU) of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) of former chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav. The Congress party is a junior ally of the two Bihar heavyweights.

Only Today’s Chanakya polling agency, predicted a landslide for Mr Modi’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

Polls on Times Now in association with C-Voter predicted 122 seats in a house of 243 for the JDU-led grand alliance while News X predicted 130 to 140 seats for it.

The two channels gave the BJP-led alliance 111 and 90 to 100 seats respectively.

India Today-Cicero poll predicted 113 to 127 seats for the NDA comprising BJP, LJP, HAM (Secular) and RLSP and 111 to 123 for the JDU-led alliance.

Hindi channel India TV forecast 112 to 132 seats for the JD-U led alliance and 101 to 121 for the NDA.

The Nitish Kumar-led alliance was predicted to get a simple majority of 120 to 124 by the News Nation channel, which predicted 115 to 119 seats for the rival alliance.

In the outgoing assembly, the JDU and BJP had contested elections together and won a massive majority. The JDU had won 115 seats and BJP 91. The RJD had won 22 and Congress four when they contested on their own.

The JDU-BJP alliance broke in 2013 after Chief Minister Nitish Kumar announced that his party was walking out of NDA over the BJP’s decision to anoint Narendra Modi as the chief of BJP’s campaign committee for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

In the parliamentary elections, the BJP won 22 of the 40 seats and its allies won nine.

RJD and JDU had fought separately and won four and two seats respectively.

Congress, which contested in alliance with RJD, had also won two seats while NCP one.

The exit poll by Chanakya on News-24 channel predicted a strong majority for the BJP-led NDA of 155 (plus minus 11) and the JDU-led grouping 83 (plus minus 9). Others have been given five seats (plus minus three).

Published in Dawn, November 6th, 2015

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