“Exit polls are nothing but a big farce and one should take their outcome with a bucket full of salt,” said a senior office-bearer of Lucknow chapter of People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) after a number of television channels aired analysis of exit as the marathon polls in India ended on Sunday evening.

It was not the exit polls but the variance in their projections that baffled the viewers. Nine channels aired exit polls out of which six projected that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance would get between 300 and 350 seats while three predicted 287 to 242 seats for it. The majority halfway in 543-member Lok Sabha or Lower House is 272. The variance is also visible in UP, the largest state of India, where the pollsters have given between 68 and 22 seats to the BJP.

The PUCL leader said that one of the news channels increased the seat projections for BJP in Uttar Pradesh by 10. Earlier it predicted 22 seats for the BJP in UP but an hour later it jacked it up by 10 saying BJP would win 32 seats. “How and why that increase no one knows,” he said.

Another news channel said Aam Aadmi Party vote share in Uttarakhand would be 2.5 per cent though AAP is not contesting from this hill state, he said. The exit polls have thrown up confusing numbers. While some have given upper hand to SP-BSP-RLD mahagathbandhan, others say BJP will sweep the polls in the state. The range for BJP varied from 22 to 68. In the 2014 parliamentary election, BJP and its ally Apna Dal (Sonelal) had won 73 seats in UP which has 80 Lok sabha seats.

As per the exit polls, Times Now CVoter has given BJP 38+ seats in UP, gathbandhan 40 seats, and Congress two seats while ABP Nielsen has projected 56 seats for the alliance, 22 for BJP  and two for Congress.