By Ranjona Banerji
Uttarakhand voted on April 11, the first polling day in the 2019 general elections. Being unschooled by Axis My India, I went and voted in the Tehri Garhwal constituency, for the Mussourie assembly constituency. According to the Axis My India-India Today exit poll, Uttarakhand has the following Lok Sabha seats: Sadulshahar, Ganganagar, Karanpur, Suratgarh and Raisingh Nagar.
In fact: Tehri Garhwal, Garhwal, Haridwar, Almora and Nainital-Uddhamsingh Nagar.
I had decided not to write about these exit polls until the results were declared but now Sadulshahar, Ganganagar, Karanpur, Suratgarh and Raisingh Nagar have forced me to. I don’t know where these places are. I could not find them as assembly constituencies within Uttarakhand’s five Lok Sabha seats. Perhaps they exist. Somewhere. Somewhere where the pollsters found them.
Since these exit polls began unfurling themselves at 6.30 pm on May 19, there has been stock market excitement, BJP supporter excitement, but most of all, unbridled, uncontrollable, overjoyed news channel excitement. Some were bigger than others, most gave a massive majority to the BJP, some had TV people flying about in cyber helicopters, OMG!!! So exciting!!!
The next day, hmm. Axis My India which conducted the poll for India Today had this most fabulous disclaimer: “Seat by Seat indicated are based purely on the popularity of the political party during the Exit Polls and not on the individual candidate and hence we cannot be held responsible for any variation of the winning or losing of the individual candidate states in the Seat by Seat in our Exit Polls.”
Read it carefully, it is so amazingly written, it needs some concentration to comprehend it.
This wasn’t the only thing that Axis My India got wrong or had to clarify. Read on:
https://newscentral24x7.com/india-today-axis-exit-poll-names-uttarakhand-lok-sabha-constituencies-bjp-rajasthan/
https://newscentral24x7.com/india-today-axis-exit-poll-chennai-central-congress-tamil-nadu-dmk-aiadmk/
But one cannot blame only Axis My India and India Today. The Times Now-VMR exit poll for instance gave the Aam Aadmi Party a vote share in Uttarakhand without having any candidates. Also, as usual with some of these pollsters, the BJP is shown as victorious in spite of a low vote share.
https://newscentral24x7.com/times-now-vmr-exit-poll-2019-errors-chandigarh-uttarakhand-aap-fake-poll/
Interesting how Uttarakhand, forgotten most of the time, has got so much attention. Although the number of mistakes made about Uttarakhand demonstrate how India’s smaller states get neglected, regardless of proximity to the centre of the television “news” universe.
Explanations and apologies are usually not forthcoming in such events and as the Axis My India disclaimer shows, they cannot be held responsible for anything. Well, obviously, they can’t, and we all know it. The results will be known on May 23, and the Election Commission has to be held to account for discrepancies, rigging, intimidation at voting booths by poll agents, EVM tampering, lack of security of EVMs, given the number of videos surfacing, and more.
As this distressing story from Frontline shows, more than 20 lakh EVMs are “missing” according to a petition filed in the Bombay High Court, based on documents received through the RTI.
https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/article27056139.ece
Meanwhile, as we know, these exit polls are just a television tamasha or according to gossip, a ploy to agitate the satta bazaar and stock market (are those the same thing?) and possibly provide much-needed employment opportunities in these difficult times. And also, comic relief. Look at the discrepancies in these numbers for Uttar Pradesh, as shown in the accompanying screenshot. From the top to the bottom, BJP can get between 68 and 22 seats in UP. Governments can rise and fall in that margin! What price, eh?
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Consulting Editor, MxMIndia. Her views here are personal.