Lucknow: It is 10.30am at BJP state headquarters. There is hardly a day left for results of the Assembly elections to pour in but the excitement of exit polls, which indicated the party will retain power, is not palpable.
A lone sweeper mechanically brushes away falling leaves and a few vehicles are parked in the compound.
None of the senior state leaders is at the office and the few local leaders are apprehensive about commenting on the exit polls.
“Dekhiya kya hota hai? (Lets see what happens)” says one while another chips in with “Wait and watch.”
Clearly, the leaders are apprehensive. “There is so much difference in the exit polls that we are rather confused,” says one.
The party has brought in its senior leadership, including DK Shivakumar from Karnataka, with the candidates in Bambolim Beach Resort of Goa. A total 301 candidates are in the fray in the single-phase assembly elections. Nearly 79 per cent voters cast votes in the February 14 polls in Goa.
Punjab: All arrangements have been made for the counting of ballots at 66 locations for the 117-member Punjab assembly elections from 8am on Thursday.
Punjab has seen a multi-cornered contest with hot seats comprising Amritsar (East) from where Congress state unit chief Navjot Sidhu is in the race to retain it, and Dhuri from where AAP’s chief ministerial face Bhagwant Mann is trying luck for the first time.
Uttarakhand: Preparations for the counting of votes in 70 Assembly constituencies is underway.
Polling in Uttrakhand took place on February 14 and the counting of votes will take place on Thursday.
Manipur: The counting of votes in 60 constituencies in Manipur will start on Thursday.
Assembly polls in Manipur were conducted in two phases on February 28 and March 5.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has been in Gorakhpur for the past three days and will return to the state capital only after results are declared.
His absence from the “scene of action” has dampened the spirits of party workers.
The counting of votes will begin at 8am on Thursday and first trends are expected to trickle down in the first few minutes. The ballot paper votes will be counted first, followed by the EVM votes.
The results will decide the fate of 4,441 candidates with 623 in fray in the first phase, 586 in the second phase, 627 in third, 624 in fourth, 692 in fifth, 676 in sixth and 613 in the seventh and last phase of polling.
At noon, the imposing gates of the Samajwadi Party state headquarters are firmly locked and only chosen few are allowed to enter.
SP President Akhilesh Yadav is inside, discussing the political scenario with party colleagues.
Phones in the officer are ringing furiously and important ones are being diverted to his office.
“Akhilesh ji is taking stock of the situation in various districts and is making sure that our party workers are guarding the strong rooms where EVMs are kept. There have been efforts to change and tamper with EVM and the exit polls are completely manipulated,” says a party functionary on condition of anonymity.
Congress state headquarters deserted
Outside the party office, scores of party workers are gathered around stalls selling tea and ‘baati chokha’.
More than the exit polls, they can be heard avidly discussing the bets of bookies in the ‘satta’ markets.
“The ‘satta market’ is much more reliable than the exit polls. Huge bets are being laid on a SP government and we would like to believe this,” says a former office bearer.
Akash Gupta, who runs ‘baati chokha’ stall on Vikramaditya Marg, says that most of his customers are confident of the SP forming government. “If that happens, my business will boom,” he says with a smile.
At 1.30pm the Congress state headquarters is deserted. Most of the rooms in the state office are locked and staff tells visitors that no leader is available right now. “They are either in their constituencies or in their homes,” he says nonchalantly.
Phones switched off
The tea stalls outside the UPCC office are equally deserted.
One of the tea stall owners said: “It is only when Priyanka Gandhi comes here that there is a sizeable presence of party workers otherwise, no one comes here.”
“The Congress is working for 2024 Lok Sabha elections. They are not interested in state elections.”
The mobile phones of most of the state leaders were switched off on Wednesday.
At 3pm the Bahujan Samaj Party state office’s blue gates are firmly locked and four security men with an inexplicable frown stand guard outside.
There is no pre-election buzz and no office bearers who can be reached out to.
The entry of media persons is strictly banned. The few vendors have been shooed away and the parking is almost empty. Mayawati’s residence, which is a stone’s throw away from the party office, also is out of bounds for visitors.
There is no talk of election results and the few staff members who saunter in and out of the party office and Mayawati’s residence, refuse to even talk about poll results.
