One of the major focus areas in this election for the BJP was the south.
Mocked by the opposition, the BJP's 'ab ki baar 400 paar' slogan could be turning into a reality, the Jan Ki Baat exit poll has predicted.
The agency has said the NDA is expected to win 362-392 Lok Sabha seats, comfortably over the majority mark of 272, while the INDIA alliance will get only between 141 and 161.
One of the major focus areas in this election for the BJP was the south and the exit poll suggests that its efforts have paid off. In Karnataka, where the party had won 25 of the 28 constituencies in 2019 and was expected to lose many of them, given the Congress' big victory in the Assembly polls last year, the poll predicts that the NDA will win between 21 and 23. The Congress is predicted to win only between 5 and 7.
The three major states in the region that the BJP has traditionally not done well in are Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh and the agency says that things could be different this time. The party had failed to win even a single seat in the three states in 2019 and Jan Ki Baat says the NDA could win between 0 and 5 in Tamil Nadu, between 10 and 14 in Andhra Pradesh and could open its account in Kerala. Alliances will play a big role here and it will be interesting to see how many seats the BJP gets individually.
In Telangana, when the BJP had won 4 seats last time, the number is expected to shoot up to 9-12 in these elections, the agency has predicted. This will make it the single largest party in the state and come as a major shock to the Congress, which had won the Assembly polls convincingly last year, ousting the nearly decade-long rule of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi. The Congress, the poll says, is expected to win between 4 and 7 seats, up from the three it had won last time but way short of the number it would have in mind.
The three biggest states in terms of Lok Sabha seats are Uttar Pradesh (80), Maharashtra (48), West Bengal (42) and Bihar (40). The Jan Ki Baat Poll has given the NDA a massive lead in UP, predicting that it will win between 68 and 74 seats. In Maharashtra, despite the predicted dent because of the splitting of the Shiv Sena and the NCP, the NDA is predicted to win between 34 and 41 seats.
Bengal is expected to emerge as a major story if the Jan Ki Baat prediction is true. The poll has given the BJP between 21 and 26 seats in the state, making it the single-largest party in terms of Lok Sabha constituencies, and the Trinamool Congress between 16 and 18. This will be a huge boost for the ruling party at the Centre - which had upped its numbers enormously from two seats in 2104 to 18 in 2019 - and a major setback for the Trinamool Congress, which has been predicting that the BJP won't cross single digits in the state this time.
Bihar was another state where the NDA was expected to lose a few seats given the dent suffered by the Janata Dal United after Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar made yet another switch, and the perceived popularity of the Rashtriya Janta Dal. The NDA, the poll says will get between 32 and 37 seats, down only slightly from the 39 it had got in 2019.