Nifty ends flat as investors stay cautious ahead of poll results

BJP national president Amit Shah, along with Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and other top party brass, held a marathon meeting at party headquarters Kamalam on Thursday evening.

The exit polls haven’t looked into how seats will change depending on small but important factors like the extent of the votes received by AAP and the damage done to the BJP by the Goa Suraksha Manch and the MGP. But sources say that they have largely voted for the Congress because they were sceptical of a new force in the fray – the AAP. Giving a slightly more conservative estimate, CNN-IBN claims the BJP would get 193 seats putting it at striking distance of achieving majority (202).

MRC survey gives the BJP 185 seats, The ABP News-Lokniti poll gives it 164-176 and India TV- C-voter show the party getting 155-167 seats.

Perhaps for the first time in India’s history India has a Prime Minister who will respond rather readily to tweets, in fact he even presented a scarf to someone who praised it on twitter, regularly shares stories of his travels on social media and so on.

It would be interesting to see which exit poll hits close to the bull’s-eye on March 11.

The BJP’s defeat will establish public disapproval of attempts to topple the Congress government in 2016 and also establish if Harish Rawat has emerged as another state leader whose popularity can withstand Mr Modi’s onslaught. It projected 42-51 for AAP and 4-7 for SAD-BJP.

Leaders of all parties, in private conversations, are afraid of seeing a hung house.

The state went to polls in single phase on February 4 and recorded 78.60 per cent polling as against 78.57 per cent voter turnout in 2012. All the big-wigs from parties came to state who they thought would win. The AAP, on the other hand, was confident of bagging close to 100 seats. “Volatility heightened in the wake of the various exit polls for the 5 state assembly elections released yesterday and ahead of the results tomorrow”, said Mr. Karthikraj Lakshmanan, Senior Fund Manager – Equities, BNP Paribas Mutual Fund. In Uttarakhand, it gave the BJP a majority with 43 seats followed by the ruling Congress with 23. If the Congress party is to survive, it can only do so without the Gandhis, who serve no useful objective anymore, either as vote catchers or as arbiters in intra-party feuds. “There are a number of ongoing major developmental works like say, construction of new Zuari bridge, in Goa, which is funded by the central government”, he added, pointing out that if the funding for the same is stopped by the Narendra Modi government then the contractors would approach the court of law.