The Congress party has sought a ban on opinion polls with its leaders alleging corruption in the surveys and claiming that these are exercises in manipulation, inviting the Opposition ire.
The BJP slammed the Congress saying that only losers demand such a ban. Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley wrote that banning opinion polls is neither desirable nor Constitutional as they are deemed to be part of free speech.
While Congress leaders accused pollsters of fixing the results, the AICC legal cell wrote to the Election Commission endorsing the watchdog’s views on restricting the publication of opinion poll results during the elections.
Several opinion polls conducted recently show BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi ahead of Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi. Opinion polls on the Assembly elections show BJP as the clear winner in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.
Secretary of the legal cell, K.C. Mittal wrote to the Election Commission last week saying that the Congress party “fully endorses the views of the Election Commission of India to restrict publication and dissemination of opinion polls during the election. In fact, the opinion polls during election are neither scientific nor is there any transparent process for such polls.”
Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh attacked psephologist Yogendra Yadav in particular saying that after becoming a member of the Aam Admi Party, he was predicting a clear victory for Arvind Kejriwal’s party.
“These have become a farce. They should be banned altogether. The kind of complaints, information that I have got show that anybody can pay and get a survey as desired...In a country of 1.2 billion people, how can a few thousand people predict the trend. It has become a racket. So many groups have sprung up,” said Singh.
Jaitley in an article released by the BJP on Monday wrote: “There are opinion polls and opinion polls. Some have acquired credibility and some can easily be ignored. Some are cases of even ‘participatory psephology’. Whatever may be the reliability or otherwise of these polls, can they be prohibited or banned?”
Noting that political parties tend to rubbish opinion polls that predict adverse results, he said the loser demands a ban and the potential winner wants them to continue.