33 per cent of people believe Siddaramaiah is best suited to be next chief minister of Karnataka (File)

Karnataka is heading towards a hung Assembly this year, an India Today-Karvy Insights opinion poll conducted just over a month before the high-stakes election in the state predicts.

The biggest takeaway from the Karnataka opinion poll is that no one party is expected to reach the magic number of 112 in Karnataka's 225-member Assembly (voting will be held only for 224 seats however; one MLA is a Governor's nominee from the Anglo-Saxon community).

The Congress, which is currently in power in Karnataka, can hope to win between 90 and 101 seats in the state election. The Bharatiya Janata Party, which is hoping to oust Congress from yet another state, will win between 78 and 86 seats, the opinion poll shows.

Going by the India Today-Karvy Insights opinion poll, HD Deve Gowda's Janata Dal (Secular) will be the kingmaker in Karnataka, with the party and its pre-poll alliance member the Bahujan Samaj Party, winning between 34 and 43 seats.

In terms of vote share, Congress will get 37 per cent of votes, the BJP 35 per cent and the JD (S)-BSP 19 per cent, the opinion poll shows.

Compared to how things currently stand in the Karnataka Assembly, the Congress will see its seat-share fall while the BJP will see its numbers go up. The improved performance, however, is not likely to ensure the saffron party of an outright win in the Karnataka Assembly election.

While the Congress will see its seat tally come down, there is a silver lining in store for the party: most in Karnataka want the JD (S)-BSP combine to lend its support to the Grand Old Party; 39 per cent want the JD (S)+ to tie up with the Congress in case of a hung Assembly while 29 per cent want the party to ally with BJP.

For the India Today-Karvy Insights opinion poll, a total of 27,919 interviews were conducted across all of Karnataka's 224 constituencies that will vote in the upcoming Assembly election on May 12 (results will be out May 15). Sixty-two 62 per cent of the interviews were in rural areas, the remaining in urban centres.