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Exit polls forecast big win for BJP

Pallab Bhattacharya, New Delhi
A record turnout yesterday marked the end of polling in the long-drawn Indian parliamentary' election, with exit polls suggesting that the Bharatiya Janata Party led by Narendra Modi and its allies are on their way toward securing a majority.
The final phase of voting in 41 constituencies ended and the first exit polls released soon afterwards pointed to a huge voters' swing towards the BJP.
Official results of the elections will be declared on May 16 when the vote count is taken up for all the 543 Lok Sabha seats.
The BJP was projected by exit polls to win 249 of the 543 seats in parliament while its allies in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) would get a further 40, according to a survey by CVoter that predicted ruling Congress party's share would fall to a record low of 78.
Another poll for the India Today group, released shortly after the end of the final round of voting yesterday, predicted the NDA would win around 272 seats.
The pollsters stressed that the margin of error made a firm prediction impossible and previous polls have proven inaccurate.
Even if prime ministerial candidate Modi and his allies fall short of a majority, the projected results would represent a spectacular rise in the BJP's showing since the last election in 2009 when it won had 116 seats against 206 for the Congress.
Modi has already indicated that he is looking to find further allies among a host of regional parties which would give him a much more stablecoalition. Ruling Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (IIPA) was tipped to get between 101 and 148 seats while others, including regional parties and Left, were projected to get between 146 and 156 seats, according to the polls shown on TV channels at the end of the ninth and last phase of polling yesterday.
Ananda Bazar Patrika News-Nielson poll projected a clear majority for the NDA with 281 seats while the 11 PA was projected to get 97 and others 165.
The poll said the NDA would make major gains in the key battleground states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra, which together account for 168 seats.
In West Bengal, Trinamool Congress is expected to reassert its supremacy with most exit polls giving it 20 to 31 seats and showing the Left Front, voted out of power in the state three years ago, making a slow comeback with 7 to 15 seats. The BJP is projected to get 1 to 3 seats in West Bengal.
The survey results confirmed opinion polls forecasts before voting started on April 7 that the BJP and its allies should be able to cobble a majority (272) in the Lok Sabha parliament after trouncing the ruling Congress party.
After the ninth and final phase of polling yesterday, the Indian Election Commission said a total of 551 million have voted - 130 million more than in 2009 - in all the phases of national elections this year with turnout at a record high of66.38 percent, surpassing the previous best of 64.01 percent in 1984 after the assassination of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi.
"Today's figures may still go up marginally because of postal ballots and other factors," Akshay Rout, direc-tor general of the Election Commission, told reporters yesterday.
The focus in yesterday's polling was on the holy city of Varanasi, where the 63-year-old Modi was in the fray and hoping for a crowning victory on the final day of voting. He was challenged by Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party, and Ajai Rai of the Congress.
In a video message, Modi paid tribute to the hundreds of thousands who "stood out in the scorching sun for hours to give strength to our democracy" over the last five weeks.
Modi's seeking a parliamentary election debut in Varanasi was rich in religious symbolism and seen as reinforcing his Hindu nationalist credentials during a campaign in which he largely steered clear of his customary hardline rhetoric and focused on governance and development to revive a flagging economy after 10 years of leftleaning rule by the Congress party.
But Modi also remains a highly controversial figure over allegations that he failed swiftly to curb the deadly 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat which left at least 1,000 people dead shortly after he came to power there.