RAIPUR: The performance of the Congress party securing landslide victory on winning 68 of the 90 seats in the Assembly polls couldn’t seem to be translated for it to be the ruling party in the Lok Sabha elections, if the exit polls are to be believed, as the unprecedented decision taken by BJP of denying tickets to all sitting 10 party MPs seems to be bringing much needed reassurance for the saffron party that faced a poll debacle five months ago.
Apparently, the BJP’s experiment with new faces in the poll fray seems to be working in its favour, since every exit poll looked more or less unanimous on the BJP not doing so bad in the Lok Sabha polls as was seen during the 2018 Assembly elections when it won just 15 seats.
Most of the exit polls have given the BJP around 7 seats of the 11, though the party had earlier won 10 seats in all previous three Lok Sabha polls held in Chhattisgarh ever since it was carved out as a separate state in November 2000. “Congress stands to gain and will win all 11 seats irrespective to what the exit polls say. We saw a large segment of voters remaining silent during Assembly elections and later during Lok Sabha polls too. Congress will continue with its emphatic performance that all will see when results will be declared on May 23”, said the party’s chief spokesperson Ramesh Varlyani.
However the exit polls have brought cheers to the state leadership of BJP. The party exuded with confidence to repeat its 2014 Lok Sabha performance. “The people have reiterated their faith and confidence in the leadership of PM Modi. And it’s clearly reflected in all exit polls. The voters in Chhattisgarh were much disenchanted with the Congress government in just short span of 70 days”, said the senior BJP leader Brijmohan Agrawal.