Telangana with KCR, Congress hopeless: NDTV Exit poll

India's youngest state, Telangana, to be born on June 2, will vote overwhelmingly in favour of K Chandrasekhara Rao, the man who fronted the movement for the region to be carved out of Andhra Pradesh as a separate state.

According to NDTV's exit poll, KCR, as he is known, will get 11 of the 17 parliamentary seats at stake. His party, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi or TRS, has refused to ally so far with the Congress, which is forecast to get just three seats.

The Congress at the centre pushed the proposal for a Telangana state through parliament, counting on the move to serve as a vote-getter, but the initiative saw major blowback from its own leaders in Andhra Pradesh with Kiran Kumar Reddy resigning as chief minister. A botched roll-out -the Congress could not get the proposal cleared by parliament in time to ensure the new state was formed before elections were held - appears to have alienated voters. In 2009, the party won 12 seats in the region; this time, it loses nine of them.

Chandrababu Naidu, chief of the Telugu Desam Party or TDP, did not openly endorse a Telangana state but will manage two seats here.

The decision to turn Telangana into a state is also costing the Congress heavily in Seemandhra, the regions that will form the residuary state of Andhra Pradesh. NDTV's exit poll shows the party not getting a single seat there.