New Delhi: The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance is expected to edge the contest for Maharashtra's 48 Lok Sabha seats, according to exit polls published Saturday evening. The BJP and its coalition - breakaway factions of Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena and Sharad Pawar's NCP - is expected to win at least 22 seats (according to ABP News-C Voter) and a maximum of 41 (Jan Ki Baat's prediction).
The opposition INDIA bloc, led by the Congress and including the original Sena and NCP groups, led by ex-Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar, can expect a best haul of 23-25 seats (so says ABP News-C Voter) and as little as 13 (data from India News-D Dynamics).
Health warning: Exit polls often get it wrong.
In the 2019 election the BJP and the (then undivided) Shiv Sena were dominant, winning 23 and 18 seats respectively, including a clean sweep of Mumbai's six constituencies and registering other key wins like Sangli, Ratnagiri-Sindhudhurg, Beed, Latur, Pune, Nashik, Aurangabad, and Nagpur.
The Congress - decimated nationally for a second consecutive election - got just one seat; Suresh Dhanorkar romped to a surprisingly easy win from Chandrapur. Mr Pawar's NCP picked up four seats, including the family bastion of Baramati that was won by his daughter, Supriya Sule.
Asaduddin Owaisi's AIMIM got four seats and the final constituency (Amravati) was won by an independent candidate - Navneet Kaur Rana. Ms Rana has since joined the BJP.
The battle for Maharashtra - which sends the most MPs to the Lok Sabha after Uttar Pradesh (80) - will be among the most-watched when votes are counted on Tuesday.
Overall the BJP has been tipped to register a big win and deliver a third consecutive term for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The saffron party, however, is likely to fall short of its ambitious targets - 370+ for itself and over 400 ('abki baar, 400 paar' was the slogan) with support from its allies.
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The opposition INDIA bloc - formed last year, in Mumbai, in fact, to halt the BJP and its election-winning machinery - has been handed a stern reality check. Five major exit polls say the group will fall well short of the 285 seats predicted by Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge to NDTV this week.
An aggregate of exit polls suggests the NDA will get 367 seats and INDIA 143. Individually, the BJP will get 327 - 24 more than the 2019 - and the Congress 52, which is how much it got last time.