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Haryana and Maharashtra on Wednesday saw higher voter turnouts than those witnessed in these states either in the Lok Sabha polls earlier this year or the previous Assembly elections in 2009 - a traditional indication that people were voting for change. A similar indication came after the end of polling at 6 pm, when all the exit polls showed the incumbent governments in both states were unlikely to return to power.
Today's Chanakya, which had accurately predicted a huge victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Lok Sabha elections, saw the party again getting simple majority in both Haryana and Maharashtra. Other exit polls also forecast BJP would emerge as the single biggest party in both states but found the party falling short of the majority mark.
Chanakya showed BJP winning 52 seats in the 90-member Haryana Assembly, and 151 of the 288 seats in Maharashtra along with its smaller allies. The majority mark in these states is 46 and 145, respectively.
BJP leader J P Nadda told reporters after the polling that the party was confident of forming the government in both states.
The party believes the actual results on Sunday would vindicate its stand of going it alone - in Maharashtra, BJP had parted ways with the Shiv Sena, its ally of 25 years; in Haryana, it spilt with its Lok Sabha ally, Haryana Janhit Congress.
But other pollsters were more conservative about BJP's chances. ABP-Nielsen forecast 127 seats for the party in Maharashtra and 46 in Haryana. The exit polls of Times Now-CVoter and India TV-CVoter said BJP might bag around 130 seats in Maharashtra and 37 in Haryana. Congress was seen relegated to the third position in both states, by all polls. The Shiv Sena was predicted to be in the second in Maharashtra and the Indian National Lok Dal in Haryana.
The 73 per cent voter turnout in Haryana on Wednesday was marginally higher thn the 71.4 per cent seen in the Lok Sabha elections and the 72 per cent turnout during the previous Assembly election, in 2009.
In Maharashtra, the estimated 63 per cent turnout on Wednesday was close to the 62.36 per cent in the Lok Sabha elections and but much higher than the 59.5 per cent in the previous state election.
However, Maharashtra's Mumbai South constituency, where some of the wealthiest live, the turnout was not very encouraging. The 53.12 per cent voting in this constituency during the Lok Sabha polls had been a cause for celebration. In Wednesday's polling, though, the social media was agog with comments about voters' apathetic attitude, in spite of exhortations from Bollywood stars to vote. In this constituency, as also some other Mumbai suburbs, voters barely trickled in.
In the Lok Sabha polls, it was Bhandara Gondiya that had notched up one of the highest voting in Maharashtra (72 per cent). This time, it was Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan's seat, Karad South, that saw a turnout of 69 per cent, one of the highest.
In Haryana, the Congress seemed almost absent from polling booths, while the biggest presence of polling agents was for the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD); BJP, too, remained low-key. Some incidents of violence were reported from Hisar, where the Jat and Dalit communities clashed. Police and fire brigade had to be deployed in that area as some vehicles were burnt.
