Didi to win West Bengal, Assam to get BJP, Kerala to turn Left, Tamil Nadu up in air
NEW DELHI: Mamata Banerjee will sweep West Bengal again, the Left will win back Kerala, the BJP will gain Assam, the DMK will take Puducherry and Tamil Nadu, well, the mercurial state will keep everyone guessing until May 19, exit polls’ results released on Monday from five states indicate.
Two formidable women of Indian politics dominated the day -West Bengal’s Didi, Mamata Banerjee and Tamil Nadu’s Amma, J Jayalalithaa.
Didi’s West Bengal
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee looked set to sail through for a second consecutive term, beating what people thought would be a tough combine of the CPM and the Congress.
No scam – not Narada, not Saradha – could stop her.
Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress looks to be leading in 167 seats and the CPM-Congress is ahead in 120 seats, according to CVoter Exit Polls.
In fact, the India Today-Axis exit poll predicts a whopping 243 seats for the TMC.
“We will wait for May 19 and the actual results. The people of Bengal will bless Trinamool abundantly. Mamata Banerjee government’s peace and communal harmony will win the hearts and minds of the people of Bengal,” TMC spokesperson Derek O’Brien was quoted.
However, CPM MP Ritabrata Banerjee and Congress leader Abdul Mannan told that whatever the exit poll prediction for West Bengal, the formation of an alliance government was “imminent”.
The opposition kept calling this Bengal Assembly election, the ‘Swacch West Bengal election’- or the ‘Clean West Bengal election’. The slogan, ‘From Narada to Saradha’, haunted Banerjee.
Didi was no doubt rattled and she said it as much at campaign rallies -“Mamata Banerjee is the candidate in all 294 seats”.
Given the ‘Cult of Mamata’, that slogan might just have helped her and the TMC.
Tamil Nadu keeps all guessing
The fate of the other formidable woman of Indian politics, Tamil Nadu’s chief minister Jayalalithaa, had analysts scrambling as polls were divided – some indicated her winning and some indicated her losing.
CVoter exit polls indicated ‘Amma’ is winning, with 139 of 234 seats for the AIADMK, 78 for Karunanidhi’s DMK and 17 seats for ‘others’ in the state.
Chanakya predicts just 90 seats for the AIADMK, while ABP predicts 95 seats for it.
The News Nation TV exit poll gave 95-99 seats to Jayalalithaa and 114-118 to the DMK-Congress alliance in the state. The People Welfare Front alliance was set to get 14 seats and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) four seats, it said. Nine seats could go to others.
The India Today-Axis exit poll predicted 124-140 seats going to the DMK-Congress alliance, 89-110 to the AIADMK, 0-3 to the BJP and 4-8 to others.
Come May 19, if Jayalalithaa wins, she will become the first CM in decades to return to power. The last person to do so was AIADMK founder and Jayalalithaa’s mentor, MG Ramachandran, in 1984.
If the DMK wins, 91-year-old Karunanidhi will serve his sixth term as chief minister of Tamil Nadu.
High stakes for both CM candidates, then.
BJP’s gamble in Assam paid off?
Sneaking in as a likely giant-killer – although that result was somewhat expected – was the BJP’s unassuming Sarabananda Sonowal, who looked set to oust the Congress war horse, Tarun Gogoi, who’s been Assam chief minister for as long as three terms.
For the BJP, it’s one of its best showings ever, in Assam.
According to C-Voter, the BJP and its allies are set to win between 53 and 61 seats in the state. Most of the other exit polls have also indicated a comfortable win for the BJP in the state.
Consider this – in the last state elections, the BJP and allies won just 27 seats.
The ruling Congress looks like it will take quite a beating – reduced to between 37 and 45 seats, from the last state election’s 78.
The AIUDF, which could be a key player in government formation, may get 14 to 22 seats while others may win 6 to 14 seats in the state.
Exit polls conducted by ABP News and Chanakya say that the BJP is going to win as many as 81+ and 90+ seats respectively. India Today-Axis too predicts as many as 86 seats for the BJP.
Assam, meanwhile, recorded its highest ever polling percentage – 84.72 percent.
CM Gogoi chose to not believe the exit poll results.
“I don’t see why there will be anti-incumbency,” is what he said after the exit poll results. “I trust the people of Assam, they know how much development has happened under us”, he told ANI.
The BJP’s decision to field Sonowal as the chief ministerial candidate marked a big strategic shift for the party. The BJP has come to believe it lost last November’s Assembly elections in Bihar because it ignored strong local leaders. And Sonowal is certainly a strong local leader.
Sonowal’s slogan was ‘Sakalore Ananda Sarbananda’ – which means, ‘Everyone’s happiness is Sarbananda’.
For today, not just everyone, but even Sonowal, the 53-year-old bachelor, must be happy.
‘God’s own Country’ takes a left turn
In Kerala, one could say the real winner was anti-incumbency, with the opposition CPM-led Left Democratic Front looking set to topple the Congress-led United Democratic Front that has been battling corruption charges.
The CVoter Exit Poll indicates the LDF is leading in 82 seats, up from the last election’s 66 seats. The incumbent Congress-led UDF is leading in 62 seats, lower than the last election’s 72 seats. The BJP-led NDA is leading only in 4 seats.
However, the India Today-Axis poll shows LDF+ leading in as many as 94 seats and the UDF in only 43.
The LDF’s chief ministerial candidate is yet to be announced. CPI-M veteran VS Achuthanandan and politburo member Pinarayi Vijayan have been embroiled in battle of wits.
Vijayan said on Facebook last month that the media was “creating false reports” that he called 92-year-old Achuthanandan an “anti-party man.” “We are facing the polls without any differences and nobody should think that they can create impediment on that,” Vijayan added.
Exit polls never turned out to be true as we’ve seen in Delhi, Bihar, CPM leader Sitaram Yechury said. He added that the party should wait for the final result on Thursday.
Yechury’s probably being cautious because in the last Assembly election in 2011, the UDF’s Oommen Chandy won with a razor-thin majority. His UDF won just 4 seats more than the LDF.
Still, the CPM-led LDF can be cautiously optimistic, as most polls put the LDF in the saddle.
Politically-aware Puducherry
In tiny Puducherry, the opposition Congress-DMK alliance looked set to win, leading in 14 of 30 seats. The incumbent All-India NR Congress (AINRC) was winning in only nine seats. The BJP appears to have won not a single seat.
The India Today-Axis gave the DMK alliance 18 seats.
Puducherry’s chief minister N Rangaswamy broke away from the Congress to form the AINRC in 2011. That helped him win then, but he hasn’t been able to consolidate his base since. Interestingly, a total of 344 candidates were in the fray for the Union territory’s 30-member assembly. And, more than 7.2 lakh voters – which is 80 percent of Puducherry’s electorate – voted in the elections.
This is one state whose electorate really knows what it wants.
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