Rajasthan exit polls: aggregate gives Congress 112 seats, BJP 78

India वोट Kar | December 10, 2018

Poll Of Exit Polls: Congress May Win In Revolving Door Rajasthan

Exit polls released on Friday, after voting ended in five states, indicated that Rajasthan would keep up its pattern of voting out the sitting government. Results for Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram were due on Tuesday, December 11.

What the numbers suggest

An aggregate of the exit polls put the Congress at 112 and the BJP at 78 of the 199 Rajasthan seats where voting took place. A party needs 100 seats to form the government.

Apart from anti-incumbency, the BJP had lost several prominent members before the election. Among them was Manvendra Singh, son of the party’s founder-member Jaswant Singh, who took on Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje in her own seat of Jhalrapatan.

The chief minister question

A Congress win would force the party to settle a question it had postponed for months: who would be chief minister. Former Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, a party veteran, faced a challenge for the post from state Congress chief Sachin Pilot.

“The high command will decide who will be Chief Minister,” Gehlot said, calling questions about Pilot’s claim hypothetical. Pilot, asked the same, said he did not know, that his task had been to win, and that he felt fortunate to have had the backing of the state’s leaders and workers. He said it had long been the tradition for elected legislators to choose the chief minister.

The previous month, Gehlot and Pilot had appeared together before the press to say both of them would be candidates. There had been much speculation over whether either would stand, since both were seen as chief ministerial contenders and the party appeared wary of a leadership tussle.