The Janata Dal (United) and the lok Janshakti Party on Tuesday supported Congress’ demand to ban opinion polls. While the JD(U) described such surveys as a mockery of democracy, the lJP claimed predictions by media houses on poll outcome often goes wrong.
In a letter to Chief Election Commission VS Sampath, JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav claimed his party has always rejected the idea of opinion poll. “I may point out here that money plays a major role in surveys in the name of opinion polls,” Yadav wrote in his letter.
The former convener of the NDA said it was quite difficult for the regional parties to spend such enormous amount of money to get such surveys conducted. “Vote of an individual has been a great strength in a democracy, which is slowly and slowly being captured by moneyed people,” he said adding opinion poll is one of the measures used for this.
Yadav expressed unhappiness over the on-going debate on opinion polls and feared discussions on such subjects went will be a ‘great threat to democracy’. He further wrote, “In view of the above, I am completely against the idea of opinion polls in this country, which our party has been demanding for a long time.”
In Patna, lok Janshakti Party president Ramvilas Paswan also supported Congress in banning opinion and exit polls.
“lJP will soon write a letter to Election Commission to put a stop on opinion and exit polls,” Paswan told the reporters. The lJP chief said such guessing on elections results generally goes wrong which puts a question mark on credibility of media organisations too.