Assembly election results 2018: In Telangana, TRS-AIMIM combine cross halfway mark in leads

Rajasthan, MP, Mizoram, Telangana, Chhattisgarh Election 2018 LIVE Updates: Counting has begun across five states and the outcome of the polls to the five states — Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Mizoram — will be a test of the electoral strategy of Congress president Rahul Gandhi, who assumed office in December last year, and the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The results will also have a bearing on efforts to forge opposition unity for the 2019 elections and if the Congress will emerge as the natural leader of the anti-BJP front.

Exit polls have mostly forecast a tight race between the ruling BJP and the Congress in Madhya Pradesh and neighbouring Chhattisgarh, while many of them have given a clear majority to the Congress in Rajasthan. For Telangana, exit polls have been divided between the TRS and the Congress-led opposition alliance. If these forecasts hold true, the Congress which has been losing state after state since the 2014 elections — of the 22 states that went to polls after 2014, Congress has won, on its own, only two, Punjab in 2017 and Puducherry in 2016 — will get a booster shot in the run-up to the 2019 elections.