The results of the January 2019 India Today Mood of the Nation (MOTN) survey bring both good and bad news for the Opposition.

The survey predicts that the NDA's seat tally will be 35 less than the majority mark if elections were held now. But while the Opposition may rejoice at having put the NDA and Modi on the mat, the survey also reveals that neither the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) nor any other Opposition alliance will be in a position to form the government on its own.

The UPA is likely to multiply its tally by nearly three times, according to this survey, from 59 in 2014 to 166. That's still a 106 short of a majority. And the rest of the Opposition, that includes the Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and a dozen others, will get the remaining 140 seats.

All this means that if there are no major shifts in alliance partners, the 2019 general election will deliver a truly hung Parliament.

For many voters, such a fractured mandate and the political uncertainty it spells is a disconcerting scenario. That is why Modi and the BJP have been hammering home the need for voters to give them a full majority or, as they warn, the country could be plunged into chaos. Senior leader Arun Jaitley expressed exactly this on his blog, "It is Modi vs an unviable and an unworkable short-lived combination. Or it is Modi vs Chaos."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi went further than Jaitley and argued that it was coalition governments in the past 30 years that had stymied India's growth, made corruption endemic and left the nation in a shambles before he took over.

The Congress party retorted by mocking Modi for deriding the work of BJP icon Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who had led a coalition government from 1998-2004. The party also claimed that it was during the coalition era that Congress governments ushered in far-reaching economic reforms and the country recorded its highest rates of economic growth.

Now, how will the UPA fare if the SP, the BSP and the TMC join it? Find out in Story No. 3.