Trinamool Congress may come back to power in Bengal by a wafer-thin margin, exit-polls conducted by the ABP-Nielson say. The Bengal ruling outfit may get about 44 percent votes as against 42 percent of the Congress-left alliance.
The tally projected by the ABP-Nielson however differs from surveys conducted by some other media houses most of which predict a landslide victory for Mamata Banerjee. According to these concerns the Trinamool may win anywhere between 196 and 253 seats while the left-Congress alliance may get 38-92 out of 294 Assembly seats.
ABP-Nielson which had almost correctly predicted the 2011 Assembly election results predict 163 wins for the Trinamool Congress in comparison to about 126 victories for the Congress-left alliance. The Trinamool Congress leaders had been predicting more than 200 seats for the Bengal ruling party.
The survey has given one seat to the BJP which is likely to poll about 7 per cent votes. Others, that include CPI(M-l) and SUCI, are likely to get about 4 seats bagging 7 per cent votes.
The interesting part of the Nielson survey however is it has marked 25 seats as doubtful and assigning the “benefit of doubt” to the Trinamool Congress. Hence if the doubtful 25 seats is taken out of the Trinamool its tally may well come down to 138 falling 10 seats short of the magic figure of 248. On the contrary if these “doubtful” seats go in favour of the Congress-left alliance then their tally could go up to 151.
The study has given 35 seats to the Trinamool and 14 to Alliance in the first phase. For the second phase the survey tends project 18 seats for the ruling outfit and 34 for the Alliance. In the third phase the TMC gets 28 seats as against 34 of the Alliance. In fourth, fifth and sixth phase when polls where mostly held in North and South 24 Parganas, Kolkata, East Midnapore and Coochbehar the Trinamool Congress is likely win 82 seats as against the Alliance’s 41. The survey tends to throw light on a few major factors, experts say. First the Congress and the left has managed to retain their bases in North and central Bengal. In rural-southern Bengal Mamata Banerjee is still to reckon with. But more importantly in the urban-southern Bengal corruption issues like Saradha and Narada have played a major role out-doing the ruling party’s “dole politics” so to say.
“It seems that though the projects like Kanyashree where girls have been given scholarships, `2-a-kg rice, free-cycle project etc have thrown impact on the voters it has failed to project as much impact as it should,” says Dr Aminul Islam a professor.
While TMC leaders like Bijan Sarkar said his party was likely to get about 196 seats former CPI(M) MP Samik lahiri challenged the exit poll wondering “how the people will be able to speak their mind during exit poll when the Chief Minister herself and her strongmen were publicly threatening the voters to settle score ‘inch-by-inch’ after the polls and reminding them that the CRPF will be there till May 21 after which things will be controlled by her Government.”