“Exit polls are nothing but a big farce and one should take their outcome with a bucket full of salt,” said a senior office-bearer of Lucknow chapter of People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) after a number of television channels aired analysis of exit as the marathon polls in India ended on Sunday evening.
It was not the exit polls but the variance in their projections that baffled the viewers. Nine channels aired exit polls out of which six projected that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance would get between 300 and 350 seats while three predicted 287 to 242 seats for it.
The majority halfway in 543-member Lok Sabha or Lower House is 272.
The variance is also visible in Uttar Pradesh, the largest state of India, where the pollsters have given between 68 and 22 seats to the BJP.
The PUCL leader said that one of the news channels increased the seat projections for BJP in Uttar Pradesh by 10. Earlier it predicted 22 seats for the BJP in UP but an hour later it jacked it up by 10 saying BJP would win 32 seats. “How and why that increase no one knows,” he said.
Another news channel said Aam Aadmi Party vote share in Uttarakhand would be 2.5 per cent though AAP is not contesting from this hill state, he said.
The exit polls have thrown up confusing numbers. While some have given upper hand to SP-BSP-RLD mahagathbandhan, others say BJP will sweep the polls in the state. The range for BJP varied from 22 to 68.
In the 2014 parliamentary election, BJP and its ally Apna Dal (Sonelal) had won 73 seats in UP which has 80 Lok sabha seats.
As per the exit polls, Times Now CVoter has given BJP 38+ seats in UP, gathbandhan 40 seats, and Congress two seats while ABP Nielsen has projected 56 seats for the alliance, 22 for BJP and two for Congress.
News18 IPSOS has predicted that BJP and allies getting will get between 60 and 62 seats, SP-BSP-RLD alliance between 17 and 19 seats, and Congress between one and two seats.
NDTV’s poll of polls has predicted BJP+ winning 46 seats, the alliance winning 31 seats, and Congress winning three.
What raises eyebrows is the strong caste foundation of gathbandhan that centres around DMY – Dalit, Muslim and Yadav – combination, counted on the solidarity of the Backward and Dalit castes — that is the OBCs and SCs — along with the undisputed support from the strong Muslim population.
With Jat added to this combination in western UP through RLD, the caste arithmetic looked favourable for the alliance.
For BJP, its campaign rested on Modi. There was no wave in favour of the ruling party. “Everyone knows that there was no wave then how come BJP has done so well, if we take exit poll outcome as a final result,” Congress leader Amarnath Agarwal said.
There is something fishy, he said.