UP Election 2022 Exit Polls project win for Yogi, Opposition says wait for 'surprise'

Exit polls are projecting a win for the Bharatiya Janata Party.

UP Election 2022 Exit Poll results live updates

New Delhi, First Published Mar 7, 2022, 6:12 PM IST | Last Updated Mar 7, 2022, 9:06 PM IST

The votes are in, and all eyes are upon March 10 when the Electronic Voting Machines will be open and reveal the people's mandate in the Uttar Pradesh assembly election 2022. Before that, exit polls are projecting a win for the Bharatiya Janata Party.

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'There will be surprises this time'

Opposition BSP has said that the exit polls may be far from reality. Recalling the 2007 results in which Bahujan Samajwadi Party formed the government, MP Kunwar Danish Ali said, "There will be surprises this time. In 2007 no one expected us to form the government, but we did."

He said there will be a non-BJP and secular government.

He said that the exit poll results may be misleading because the weaker section and the downtrodden will not openly say that they voted against BJP due to fear of getting targeted.

The leader also recalled the instance of 2004 -- when he was in Janata Dal-Secular -- when surveys had given good numbers to the BJP and Congress and gave the JD-S somewhere between 12 to 13 seats. When the results were declared, JD-S got 62 seats.

The leader said he has seen a lot of surveys going wrong on result day as the reality will be different.

This time one party may get absolute majority, he said, but quickly adding that he is not authorized to speak about the alliance now.

To recall, elections to 403 seats of the Uttar Pradesh assembly were held in seven phases. The seven-phase polling was held on February 10, February 14, February 20, February 23, February 27, March 3 and March 7. According to Election Commission guidelines, exit polls conducted by various pollsters in association with television news channels cannot be published till the end of voting.

The 2022 election is being seen as a referendum on Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's government. The government faced massive public backlash during the Covid-19 pandemic when visuals of bodies floating down the Ganga left the nation in shock. The BJP's main challengers are Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party, Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party and the Priyanka Gandhi Vadra-led Congress

During the election phase, the BJP highlighted its achievements as far as overhauling the law and order situation and launching several development projects across the state. However, the Opposition strongly raised issues like the government's mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic, Lakhimpur Kheri violence and the farmers' protest to target the Yogi Adityanath administration.

Some opinion polls ahead of the voting in Uttar Pradesh had projected that the BJP may not sweep the state election as it had in 2017. However, the BJP, according to opinion polls, may still be able to garner enough seats to Yogi Aditynath to form a government.

In the 2017 UP assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party had swept the mandate, winning 312 of the 384 seats that it has contested on. Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi party came a distant second with just 47 seats (311 seats contested) to its name followed by 19 seats (403 seats contested) for the Bahujan Samaj Party. The Congress party could manage a mere seven seats in the entire state despite an alliance with the Samajwadi Party. In 2022, Akhilesh decided against repeating the exercise and decided to contest alone. Time will decide if this experiment impacts Akhilesh's political fortunes.

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