Gujarat Assembly polls: BJP will win 91-99 seats while Congress will bag 78-86 seats, predicts opinion poll

The latest opinion poll conducted by Lokniti-CSDS-ABP News predicts that the Gujarat Assembly election 2017 may not be an easy victory for the BJP after all. In a major turnaround, the poll has predicted that Congress will give the BJP a tough time in the upcoming polls. It said that in the 182-member Assembly, BJP is likely to win 91-99 seats while the Congress will bag 78-86 seats, according to ABP Live. [caption id=“attachment_4240685” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] It further predicted that both Congress and BJP will get around 43 percent of the votes each. The Patidar community, traditionally constituting a vote bank for BJP, will slide towards the Congress, predicted the opinion poll. This prediction is a massive turnaround from the one the poll had made in August, when it had predicted that BJP will win 144-152 seats in the Assembly while Congress will manage to win only 26-32, according to The Times of India. By October, this number for the BJP had fallen to 113-121 while for the Congress, it had risen to 58-64. The poll also said that in south Gujarat, Congress will gain an 11-percent vote share to surge ahead of the BJP. On Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi likened the imminent elevation of Rahul Gandhi to dynastic succession of Mughal rulers, and castigated the Congress for abandoning “public modesty” by deciding to make a person, who is out on bail in a graft case, its president. The prime minister also targeted the Congress over corruption during its rule, and spoke about the clean governance under him in Gujarat and at the Centre. Modi said with the Congress deciding to make such a leader its president gave a glimpse of what culture the party will follow and the kind of leadership will emerge there in future. The Gujarat Assembly election will take place in two phases on 9 and 14 December. The counting of votes will take place on 18 December. With inputs from PTI