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New Delhi: Millions
of votes polled in five states in India's biggest popularity test
since the 2009 Lok Sabha battle will be counted Tuesday with
political players keeping their fingers crossed.
The mammoth counting exercise is set to begin at 8 a.m. in
Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Manipur and Goa where the
staggered elections ended Saturday.
The Election Commission, having won kudos for successfully
overseeing the five-state elections, says it was ready for the
job.
With exit polls predicting a mixed bag of results, leading
political parties anxiously awaited the results, expected to be
clear by noon, even as they publicly vowed that victory was
theirs.
All eyes were on Uttar Pradesh, where exit polls have predicted a
hung 403-member assembly with the Samajwadi Party (SP) tipped to
end up on top and the Congress a poor fourth.
If the exit polls prove correct, it would mark the end of five
years of Mayawati's rule in the country's most populous state.
Most pundits spoke of Congress retaining Manipur, a BJP surge in
Goa, a neck-and-neck finish in Punjab between the Congress and the
BJP-Akali Dal alliance, and a possible Congress win in Uttarakhand,
ousting the BJP.
A significant highlight of the elections this time has been the
huge voter turnout.
Record voting in Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Uttar Pradesh has
drawn varied interpretations, with the opposition parties reading
it as a factor in their favour.
While Manipur, Goa, Punjab and Uttarakhand recorded one day
balloting, there were seven rounds of polling in Uttar Pradesh.
On Monday evening, Congress spokesperson Renuka Choudhury said her
party was poised to win in all five states -- a claim that had few
takers.
Her party colleague and Steel Minister Sri Prakash Jaiswal, an MP
from Kanpur, however, made it clear that the Congress was ready to
see a secular combination take power in Uttar Pradesh.
The most forthright was Bharatiya Janata Party leader Rajnath
Singh, who told IANS that the BJP was unlikely to form a
government in Uttar Pradesh.
A former chief minister and a former BJP president, Rajnath Singh
has not had cordial relations with Uma Bharti, a former Madhya
Pradesh chief minister who ran the party's campaign in Uttar
Pradesh, upsetting many in the party.
Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Harish Rawat said the
Congress would form governments in Punjab and BJP-ruled
Uttarakhand.
He made no reference to Uttar Pradesh, where the Congress once
held sway but where it has now been out of power since 1989.
While the BSP has not reacted to the exit polls, the one man most
pleased with himself is Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav.
The son of party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, he is confident of the
Samajwadi Party taking power again in Uttar Pradesh.
"We have been saying we will get a majority," said Yadav Junior,
who has emerged as the Samajwadi Party's new face in the sprawling
state.
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