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The month-long assembly election process in Uttar Pradesh concludes on Monday, with voters in the seventh and final phase of polling casting their ballots in the eastern region of the state. Voting in the states of Punjab, Uttarakhand, Manipur, and Goa took place in the intervening weeks after the exercise got underway in U.P. on Feb. 10. The poll results for the five states will be known on March 10, when the Election Commission of India counts the votes cast beginning 8:00 am on Thursday.
With voting over, research agencies and media houses release the findings of exit poll surveys carried out across the five states.
Catch all the live coverage of the exit poll data here, as it is released through the evening.
The Shiromani Akali Dal, which was among the BJP's longest-standing allies, had walked out of the NDA following disagreements over the farm laws. In alliance with Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party, the SAD is making a bid to return to power after governing the state between 2007 and 2017.
The build-up to the U.P. election was marked by a "rising tide of religious polarisation", wrote Bloomberg Opinion's Ruth Pollard. While concurring on the spike in hate speech, fellow Bloomberg columnist Mihir Sharma argued that the election result in U.P. would be determined by voters' assessment of their economic prospects.
The BJP's election manifesto released in February promised that if it returns to power in Uttar Pradesh state it will enact even tougher punishments for those found guilty of indulging in “love jihad” – a reference to an alleged conspiracy of Muslim men luring Hindu women into marriage for conversion.
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