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The Asom Gana Parishad-Bharatiya Janata Party combine has come down heavily against the DRS exit poll that predicted a Congress victory and gave the alliance just 32 seats. The exit poll was telecast simultaneously on Doordarshan and Zee TV half-an-hour after voting ended on Thursday.
"The DRS poll has no credibility since the same agency had predicted 90 seats to the Congress barely a month ago. In 30 days, it has reduced the tally by 30 seats," AGP president and Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta said.
Ironically, even the Congress is unhappy with the DRS results. Says Tarun Gogoi, the Assam unit chief: "They have given us 42 per cent vote share but only 60 seats. In the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, we had a vote share of 39 per cent and had led in 63 Assembly segments. How can you believe them?"
The AGP has in fact come out with a detailed refutation of the poll. Some of the points that the ruling combine makes are:
The 42 per cent vote shown to the Congress is too high. It pointed out that in a multi-ethnic state like Assam, after 1983 no party has ever secured more than 35 per cent votes in an assembly election. The highest votes polled by a single party was by the AGP in 1985 when they secured 34.54 per cent. Even in the farcical elections of 1983, when there was no serious opposition to the Congress, that party could get only 52.53 per cent vote. Again in 1996, the Congress could secure only 30.56 per cent votes. There is no wave to suggest that there could be a 12 per cent positive swing in Congress' favour.
The DRS poll has shown a negative swing of 9 per cent vote against the AGP-BJP combine. But at 32 per cent, the vote percentage for the alliance is more than what AGP polled on its own in 1996 (29.70 per cent in 1996). By that criteria alone, the combine should be getting a comfortable majority.
The exit poll has also not taken into account the changed scenario in the two Lok Sabha elections held in Assam after the 1996 assembly polls. In 1998, the BJP had secured 24.47 per cent votes, which went up to 33 per cent in 1999. The AGP share in these two elections remained constant at around 17 per cent. Whereas the Congress share came down from 39 per cent in 1998 to 37.9 per cent in 1999. The AGP-BJP combined vote in 1999 was 50 per cent, 12 per cent more than the Congress.
The same agency had been completely off the mark in predicting results of the assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh and Bihar in 1997 and 1998 respectively. In MP, it predicted the defeat of the incumbent Congress government, which was subsequently proved wrong. In Bihar, the same Narasimha Rao had given 75 seats less than what the Rashtriya Janata Dal of Laloo Prasad Yadav actually secured.
And finally, the agency has doubtful credentials. As reported in the media ( Indian Express and The Hindustan Times) on Friday, DRS allegedly breached it's contract with Doordarshan and sold the same findings to a private television network.
"Therefore, we do not take the DRS exit poll as a true reflection of the people's mandate which will be definitely in our favour when the official results start coming from Sunday," the AGP said.
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