hyderabad
Notwithstanding several exit polls indicating that Bharat Rashtra Samthi (BRS) is on its way out of power in Telangana, working president of the party K.T. Rama Rao exuded confidence that they are going to retain power with a comfortable majority of over 70 out 119 seats in the Assembly.
He, however, faulted the Election Commission for allowing broadcasting and publication of exit polls when the electors were still standing in queues to exercise their right of franchise. He said that it was nothing but influencing the voters who were yet to cast their vote as spreading information was so easy in this age of mobile phone usage.
Mr. Rama Rao stated that he had taken it to the notice of the EC by calling the Chief Electoral Officer over phone and asking whether was it not influencing the voters in queue by allowing exit poll results to be aired. Allowing exit polls without completion of the polling exercise was ludicrous, he said, and suggested the EC to review its processes to prevent such influencing of voters in queues. The Congress party too was trying to influence the voters in queues with the help of exit polls, he alleged.
Addressing a press conference after the official polling hours here on Sunday, he rubbished the exit polls and the spread of misinformation stating that in 2018 too, except one but all other exit polls had gone wrong with some giving 48, 50, 57, 67 seats, respectively, against 88 security by the BRS. “Wait and watch for December 3, we are going to come back with 70 plus seats although we thought it would be 88 plus initially,” he said.
He thanked the party leaders and activists who had sweat it out for over three months now and appealed to them not to get worried or disheartened by the exit poll result., stating that the pollsters had not rocket science with them but were going by guess work without doing anything. The reputation and credibility of the media organisations and psephological institutions doing such polls would at be risk.
“Will any organisation come and seek apologies if their predictions go wrong? I don’t think they will do so except for a statement that their ‘results’ were based on information they have received,” the BRS working president said. He observed that even the national media was jumping the guns although the final number of voting percentage would come out only by Friday morning.
On the low turnout of urban voters, he said they do not come out anywhere (in cities) not just in Hyderabad. They only complain. Except minor skirmishes there was no incident forcing any re-polling, he said, adding that campaign too was peaceful except the incidents of stabbing and stone pelting of two BRS candidates.
