New Delhi, Mar 4 (DHNS): Exit polls say SP may emerge as the single largest party Uttar Pradesh, which saw five years of stable single-party government under Mayawati after a gap of nearly 15 years, may be headed for a fresh spell of political uncertainty.

Three of the four exit polls conducted by TV news channels results of which came out at the conclusion of the seven-phase polling on Saturday projected a hung Assembly in the state.

The fourth one, however, predicts the Samajwadi Party (SP) headed by Mulayam Singh Yadav, the main opposition party in the outgoing Assembly, to either get a simple majority or reach tantalisingly close to it in the 403-member state Legislative Assembly. The exit polls are bad news for incumbent Chief Minister Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). The party is projected to lose very badly. Only one of them expects the BSP to cross the 100-seat mark, as against 206 seats the party has at present. The counting of ballots is scheduled for Tuesday and results are expected by evening. Mayawati though may be inclined to wait until Tuesday since there have been many instances in the past of exit polls failing to capture the actual results.

Going by the exit polls, there is not going to be many surprises for the other two major contenders—the BJP and the Congress. All four predictions place the BJP in the third position, a position it occupied after the 2007 assembly elections.

It may be bit of a shock for the Congress, as the party is projected to end up fourth, despite the high-voltage campaign undertaken by its star campaigner Rahul Gandhi. Indeed, two polls give the party a tally that is lower than Gandhi’s mid-campaign time scaled-down figure of 50 seats.

The widely projected hung assembly situation will test the credibility of the campaign time assertions made by the four contending parties—that they will not enter into any post-poll tie-up with others to prop up a government.

Gandhi had categorically ruled out extending support to the SP, indicating that his party would rather prefer a spell of Central rule in the state. However, in the wake of the announcement of the exit poll results late Saturday evening, Congress campaign manager in the state Digvijay Singh dropped the first hint that the party might not remain firm on its campaign time assertions. “To talk on whether the Congress will enter an alliance or not, we will have to wait for the results to be declared,” he told reporters.

Congress leaders, who seemed to have already reconciled to another dismal performance in the state, started bailing out Gandhi. Rahul Gandhi would not be blamed if the Congress did not perform well, they said. Digvijay Singh on Friday stated that he and state Congress chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi, and not Rahul, should be held responsible if election results in UP did not favour the party.

However, SP leader and Mulayam Singh’s son Akhilesh Yadav continued to maintain that his party would not seek or accept support from the Congress. There have been strong speculations in political circles that the Congress and SP could forge a post-poll alliance both in UP and at the national level. Similarly, speculations have been that the BSP and BJP, too, could explore post-poll tie-up.

Counting of votes in Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur will also be taken up on March 6. In Punjab, India TV-C Voter poll gave a majority of 65 (out of 117) to the Congress while the CNN-IBN and The Week poll gave 51-63 to the ruling combine of the Shiromani Akali Dal and BJP.

In Uttarakhand, CNN-IBN gave the Congress 31-41 seats out of 70 while News 24 polling said it would be a hung House with the ruling BJP emerging as the lead party with 30 seats followed closely by the Congress at 28.