Having ousted the Left Front government in a surprise win in 2018, ending its long run in power since 1993, the Bharatiya Janata Party looks set to comfortably retain Tripura, showed four exit poll surveys whose results came in on Monday evening, soon after Meghalaya and Nagaland elections concluded.
Tripura voted on February 16 while the results will be announced on March 2.
According to the India Today-MyAxis exit poll, the BJP-IPFT coalition could get 36-45 seats in the 60-member assembly, garnering 45 per cent of the popular vote.
It also predicted the Left-Congress combine would get a paltry 6-11 seats with 32 per cent of the popular vote, a sharp drop from 43 per cent vote share in the last Assembly elections in 2018.
New party Tipra Motha, founded by former royal Pradyot Kishore Mankiya Debbarma, is shown as gathering 9-16 seats with 20 per cent of the vote share.
However, the ETG-Times Now poll indicated that BJP would remain the largest party predicting 24 seats for the party, down from 36 earlier; while the Left-Congress is predicted to get 21 seats, and Tipra Mothra, which is widely speculated to be the kingmaker of the election, likely to win 14 seats.
The ZeeNews-Matrize exit poll also predicted a comfortable win for the BJP and its ally, predicting 29-36 seats in Tripura for the saffron party, 13-21 seats for the Left-Congress combine, 11-16 seats for the Tipra party, and 0-3 seats for Others.
According to the Jan Ki Baat exit poll, the BJP is predicted to get between 29-40 seats in the 60-member Assembly, while Left and Congress is likely to bag 9-16 parties and for Tipra Mothra, 10-14 seats are being predicted.
The state which is witnessing a triangular contest this time between the BJP, Left-Congress alliance and the Tipra Mothra party saw a voter turnout of 89.90 per cent on the polling day.