India, April 29 -- For the Congress, exit poll projections released on Wednesday evening for four states and a UT told a tale of regions voting quite differently across India. In the southern states, the party appears headed for its most consequential electoral revival in years - with Kerala poised to hand it a government and Tamil Nadu consolidating its position as a partner of the DMK. Puducherry is not as pretty for the DMK-Congress, though.

And further north and east, in Assam and West Bengal, the numbers tell an even grimmer story, in which the Congress remains a distant second at best, and near-irrelevant at worst.

The standout number for the Congress is Kerala.

Three major agencies that have released projections agreed, that the...