Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi shows a victory sign after casting his vote in Ahmedabad yesterday.
Agencies/Ahmedabad
Exit polls forecast a sweeping, third term win for Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as the two-phase assembly elections ended in the state yesterday with a record 70% turnout.
Although the official results will be declared only on Thursday, all exit polls predicted that Modi would lead the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to a landslide victory.
The Ananda Bazar Patrika-Nielsen survey gave 116 of the total 182 seats to the BJP. The Congress was placed a distant second with 60 seats.
C voters (Centre for Voting Opinion and Trends in Election Research) agency said Modi could get up to 124 seats. It put 54 seats in the Congress kitty.
The News 24 Today Chanakya poll predicted a much higher 140 seats for the BJP and 40 for the Congress.
A supremely confident Modi, who has ruled Gujarat since 2001, gave a broad smile and flashed a V-sign after casting his ballot in his constituency Maninagar.
“The people of Gujarat will vote the BJP to power for a third consecutive term,” he said triumphantly.
“It’s a very peaceful election,” Modi said. “It will be a historic (election) because it has been contested on the issue of good governance and development.”
Though Modi has never declared his ambition to be prime minister, he is widely thought to be angling to lead the BJP into national elections due in 2014.
Modi’s links to some of the worst sectarian violence in post-independence India make him a hate-figure for many Muslims and secularists.
He is blamed by some rights groups for turning a blind eye to the 2002 unrest, during which as many as 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in an orgy of violence that saw victims set alight or hacked to death in the streets.
He denies any wrongdoing.
The Election Commission put yesterday’s voting percentage in 95 constituencies at 70.2% - higher than the 64.39% recorded in 1995. Gujarat has 37.8mn voters.
The first round in 87 constituencies on December 13 also drew 70.75% of the voters.
BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Parshottam Rupala said: “We will win, and we will better our record of 2007.”
Five years ago, the BJP bagged 117 seats while the Congress got 59.
His colleague Smriti Irani called the heavy polling “a victory for development” and warned that the expected Congress rout would be a defeat for “dynastic politics.”
Actor-politician Irani was referring to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul who spearheaded their party’s election campaign, repeatedly targeting Modi on a variety of counts.
Congress leader Girija Vyas, however, asserted that Modi would lose this time. “The people have voted in large numbers and they have voted for change. We are sure the Congress will win.”
Political pundits, however, seemed to agree broadly with the exit poll predictions that Modi would get another five years - a result which could cast a shadow on national politics ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha battle.
Pollster G V L Narasimha Rao told TimesNow television channel that he expected a Modi wave.
In an undisguised comment on the Congress, political analyst Yogendra Yadav said the BJP was set to win due to “TINA (There Is No Alternative) factor.”