By Sushil Kutty
The results of the nine Uttar Pradesh bypolls will by far be more important than those of Maharashtra and Jharkhand assembly polls, if only because Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who spent a lot of time in both states, cannot afford to lose Uttar Pradesh to Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav, who is looking for the Yogi to go back to his ‘mutt’ and be a ‘muttadeesh’. Also, there is the spectre of Union Home Minister Amit Shah whose interest in Yogi Adityanath’s performance is more than academic.
Akhilesh Yadav has been going to town linking Yogi Adityanath’s continuance as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister to how the bypoll seats are shared between the BJP and the Samajwadi Party. If the BJP gets fewer seats than the Samajwadi Party, then Yogi Adityanath might have a tough future.
There were 90 candidates in the fray for the nine UP bypolls and for Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, they were the first electoral test after the Lok Sabha election setback. Not that the bypolls weren’t crucial for the Samajwadi Party, which upset the Bharatiya Janata Party’s calculations in the Lok Sabha elections.
Akhilesh Yadav was banking on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah to cut the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to size. But that could only be if the Samajwadi Party won all of the, or more of the bypolls. However, the Samajwadi Party looks set for ‘debacle’, say exit polls, much to the chagrin of Akhilesh Yadav who spent the whole of November 20 shooting missives to the Election Commission, complaining about violations of electoral conduct by the UP Police.
The police had allegedly taken on the role of the Election Commission for the duration of the polling for the bypolls. And the Samajwadi Party didn’t take it kindly when police asked burqa-clad Muslim women voters to reveal their facial features to be allowed to vote. Many Muslim women had to take roundabout routes to evade the police and get “safely” to the voting booths.
They were asked to come with a “red card” to be eligible to vote, and not the “white card”, which most of them carried. The post-poll allegation was that the police confiscated the “white card” and used them to vote for the BJP! The charge is that the UP Police was spoiling for a fight. And one police officer waved his revolver at a couple of Muslim women voters, asking them to keep moving and not hold up the traffic!
The women stood their ground and the police officer was left holding the ineffective firearm, for which he took a lot of flak, what with the naked display of naked aggression from Samajwadi Party. But the exit polls, which hit television screens shortly after the end of the voting deadline, helped the BJP recover. Two exit polls, Times Now’s ‘JVC’ and Matrize, gave victory for the BJP-led NDA, much to the disgust of Akhilesh Yadav, who was hoping the ‘PDA cycle’ would puncture the BJP’s balloon.
However, it was Akhilesh Yadav’s cycle, which lost the ‘Battle of Puncture’. This left a lot of people befuddled and muddled when Samajwadi Party spokespersons sounded dejected and dodgy in the TV debates on the exit polls. Don’t forget, exit polls are afflicted with trust deficit after botching up exit polls of the Lok Sabha elections and the Haryana Assembly elections.
Especially Pradeep Gupta’s ‘Axis My India’, which got both the Lok Sabha election and the Haryana election wrong. Gupta wept on live TV, his tears costing the news channel, which commissioned the exit polls, millions in hard dough! Nothing costs more than defeat and debacle.
So, should we believe this latest tranche of exit polls? Are exit polls trustworthy? Are exit polls cooked up, with salt and pepper added, according to taste? At the end of the day, if a clique of exit polls gave the BJP 6 of the 9 bypolls, three other exit polls hedged their bets. The ‘Times Now JVC’ exit poll gave six of nine bypolls to the BJP, but then what can you expect from a channel which roots for Prime Minister Narendra Modi even when its anchors are asleep?
So wait for November 23 to see what goes bust, the exit polls or the predicted winner-takes-all? Will ‘Axis My India’ pull itself out of the pits? Pradeep Gupta was the only “outlier” on November 20 and he runs the risk of being labelled ‘Fluke-Master’ if he goes wrong once more. Will November 23 sound the death-knell of exit polls, believing them is like Ripley’s ‘Believe It Or Not!’ (IPA Service)
India Needs Revenue Boost To Remain On Sustainable Fiscal And Growth Path 