Phir ek baar Modi Sarkar?

New Delhi: The poll of polls, a round-up of the exit polls on Sunday, predicted that the Narendra Modi-led NDA government is likely to come back to power, with the poll of polls projecting the BJP-led alliance to win overall 296 seats out of 543 Lok Sabha seats.

The poll prediction also pegged the Congress-led UPA to win 126 seats and others posting a victory in 120 seats. The results of the 2019 general election are awaited on May 23.

The BJP may win almost as many seats as it did in 2014 and form a government comfortably, predict the exit polls.

The poll of polls indicates that the BJP, as it had calculated, will make up for its losses in Uttar Pradesh with Odisha and West Bengal.

In Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress will get 26 of 42 seats and the BJP will move to double digits at 14, predict the exit polls.

Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik's Biju Janata Dal (BJD) will be neck and neck with the BJP, says the poll of polls.

The gains in these two states will help make up for what the BJP is predicted to lose in Uttar Pradesh, where it scooped 71 of 80 seats in 2014.

The poll of polls predicts 49 seats for the BJP in UP now. The Mayawati-Akhilesh Yadav combination is given 26 seats while the Congress is set to do no better than it did in 2014 - two seats.

The poll of polls also indicates that the Congress may not reap much from its December victories in three big heartland states, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.

"The exit polls results are according to our expectations," BJP national vice president Vinay Sahasrabudhe said. "The grand alliance experiment has failed.

The BSP and SP could not take our votes. The main opposition parties in Uttar Pradesh are divided thin, whose benefits the BJP got."

Voting in one of India's most acrimonious elections in decades ended on Sunday after seven rounds held over a month-and-a-half.

The results will be declared on Thursday, but before that the exit polls are attempting to predict how Modi's BJP, Rahul Gandhi's Congress, their allies and other parties are likely to score.

However, it may be noted that the exit polls often go wrong. In 2014, the poll of exit polls - an aggregate of various exit polls - gave the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) 288 of the 545 seats in parliament and the Congress-led UPA 102.

The gap turned out to be far wider. The NDA won 336 seats while the UPA, which had been in power for two straight terms, was reduced to 59.