It will be a hung assembly in Uttar Pradesh with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerging closest to the threshold of 202 seats in the 403-seat assembly, exit polls forecast on Thursday.

Of the five exit polls by ABP-CSDS, TimesNow-VMR, India TV-CVoter, India Today-Axis and MRC, only Axis suggested the BJP getting a clear majority with 265 seats. The rest predicted that the BJP would stay below the 200-mark.

The CSDS survey gave the BJP 175 seats, MRC 185 seats, C-Voter 161 seats and VMR 200 seats. The average figure, or the poll of polls, worked out to be 197 seats for the BJP. This is still slightly short of the simple majority mark.

The Samajwadi Party-Congress combine is lagging far behind, according to the exit polls. The highest number of seats was given to the alliance by ABP-CSDS, which showed it getting 163 seats.

While both MRC and VMR showed the combine getting 120 seats, the C-Voter survey put the figure at 141, and Axis at 100 seats. The average number of seats the combine is getting emerged to be 129, way below the simple majority mark.

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which was being seen as the proverbial dark horse by a few political pundits, has been projected by all the surveys as the distant third -- Mayawati's party getting an average of 68 seats.

The MRC gave it 90 seats, C-Voter 87, ABP-SCDS 66, VMR 64 and Axis polls gave it just 35 seats.

The polls showed others getting around nine seats.
 

Congress, AAP in close race in Punjab: Exit polls
 
On the other side, Punjab was poised for a tight finish between Congress and Aam Aadmi Party in the assembly polls with two exit polls giving the same number of seats to the two parties.

In two other exit polls, Congress was ahead in one and AAP in the other, but all the polls predicted that the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP alliance was headed for a huge drubbing in the 117-member assembly.

The India Today-Axis poll predicted Congress getting 62-71 seats and AAP getting 42-51 seats. It said SAD-BJP alliance was likely to get between four-seven seats and others two.

The India News-MRC poll predicted AAP and Congress getting 55 seats each and SAD-BJP getting seven seats. The News 24-Today's Chanakya poll predicted Congress and AAP getting 54 each and SAD-BJP nine.

The India TV-Cvoter predicted 59-67 seats for Aam Aadmi Party, 41-49 for Congress and 5-13 for SAD-BJP.

The poll of polls by CNN-News18 gave an edge to AAP by predicting that it wll win 57 seats against 53 won by the Congress. It predicted that SAD-BJP could win seven seats.

The NDTV poll of exit polls gave Congress 55 seats against 54 to AAP and seven to SAD-BJP.

The results of last month's assembly polls in Punjab will be declared on March 11.

SAD-BJP has been in power in the state for the last 10 years, while the AAP contested assembly elections in the state for the first time.