As the curtains came down on the staggered Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, two exit polls on Tuesday projected a hung House with Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party emerging as the single largest party.
The two surveys have projected no improvement in the position of Congress despite a vigorous campaign by Rahul Gandhi and while one of them put Samajwadi Party as the second largest party, the other showed Bharatiya Janata Party taking that honour.
According to the Star News-Nielsen exit poll, SP may end up with 96 seats in the 402-seat Assembly, while main opposition BSP would be the single largest party with 137 seats.
It said BJP may end up with 108 with Congress way behind at 27, a marginal increase than their previous performance of 25 seats in 2002 elections.
The exit poll conducted by CNN-IBN and Indian Express newspaper projected BSP would end up with a seat share of 152 to 168 seats, followed by SP with 145 seats and BJP ending at the third spot at 108 seats.
The seat projection for Congress was put by this survey between 21 and 27.
Both the surveys said Samajwadi Party had improved its position in the last phase which was completed on Tuesday.
While the Star News exit poll put the vote share for BSP at 26.2 per cent and a swing of 3.2 per cent, the CNN-IBN survey showed a vote share of 29 per cent and a swing of six per cent for the party.
Both the surveys put the vote share for Congress between 10.3 and 11 per cent.