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By:

Yogesh Kumar Goyal

19 April 2026 at 12:32:19 pm

The Exit-Poll Mirage

While exit polls sketch a dramatic map of India’s electoral mood, the line between projection and verdict remains perilously thin. With the ballots across five politically pivotal arenas of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Kerala and Puducherry falling silent until the results are announced on May 4, poll surveyors have filled the vacuum with exit poll numbers that excite, alarm and often mislead. These projections have already begun shaping narratives well before D-Day on May 4. If India’s...

The Exit-Poll Mirage

While exit polls sketch a dramatic map of India’s electoral mood, the line between projection and verdict remains perilously thin. With the ballots across five politically pivotal arenas of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Kerala and Puducherry falling silent until the results are announced on May 4, poll surveyors have filled the vacuum with exit poll numbers that excite, alarm and often mislead. These projections have already begun shaping narratives well before D-Day on May 4. If India’s electoral history offers any lesson, it is that exit polls illuminate trends, not truths. Bengal’s Brinkmanship Nowhere is the drama more intense than in West Bengal, arguably the most keenly watched contest among all five arenas. The contest for its 294 seats has long transcended the state’s borders, becoming a proxy for national ambition. Most exit polls now point to a striking possibility of a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) majority, in some cases a commanding one. Such an outcome would mark a political earthquake. For decades, Bengal has resisted the BJP’s advances, its politics shaped instead by regional forces - first the Left Front, then Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC). Yet the arithmetic of the polls suggests that the BJP’s campaign built on organisational muscle and the promise of ‘parivartan’ (change) may have finally breached that wall. The TMC, meanwhile, appears to be grappling with anti-incumbency and persistent allegations of corruption. Still, one outlier poll suggests it could yet retain power, a reminder that Bengal’s electorate has a habit of confounding linear predictions. Here, more than anywhere else, the gap between projection and reality may prove widest. Steady Script If Bengal is volatile, the Assam outcome looks fairly settled. Across agencies, there is near unanimity that the BJP-led alliance is poised not just to retain power, but to do so comfortably. With the majority mark at 64 in the 126-member assembly, most estimates place the ruling coalition well above that threshold, in some cases approaching triple digits. The opposition Congress alliance, by contrast, appears stranded far behind. Under Himanta Biswa Sarma, the BJP has fused development rhetoric with a keen sense of identity politics, crafting a coalition that has proved resilient. A third consecutive term would underline the party’s deepening institutional hold over the state. Kerala, by contrast, may be returning to its old rhythm. For decades, the state has alternated power between the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) with metronomic regularity. The LDF broke that pattern in the last election, securing an unprecedented second term. Exit polls now suggest that experiment may be short-lived. Most projections place the UDF comfortably above the 71-seat majority mark in the 140-member assembly, with the LDF trailing significantly. If borne out, this would reaffirm Kerala’s instinctive resistance to prolonged incumbency. Governance records matter here, but so does a deeply ingrained political culture that treats alternation as a form of accountability. Familiar Duel? Tamil Nadu, long dominated by its Dravidian titans, shows little appetite for disruption as per most exit polls, which place M.K. Stalin’s DMK-led alliance above the halfway mark of 118 in the 234-seat assembly. Yet, some sections have suggested a possible upset could be staged by actor Vijay’s TVK, the wildcard in the Tamil Nadu battle. Most polls, however, are clear that the opposition AIADMK alliance, though competitive, seems unlikely to unseat the incumbent DMK. In Puducherry, the smallest of the five contests, the implications may nonetheless be outsized. Exit polls give the BJP-led alliance a clear majority in the 30-seat assembly, relegating the Congress-led bloc to a distant second. Numerically modest, the result would carry symbolic weight. A victory here would further entrench the BJP’s presence in the south, a region where it has historically struggled to gain ground. For all their allure, exit polls are imperfect instruments. They rest on limited samples, extrapolated across vast and diverse electorates. In a country where millions vote, the opinions of a few thousand can only approximate reality and often fail to capture its nuances. There is also the problem of the ‘silent voter’ - individuals who either conceal their preferences or shift them late. Recent elections have offered ample reminders. In states such as Haryana and Jharkhand, and even in Maharashtra where margins were misjudged, exit polls have erred, and sometimes dramatically sp. Moreover, the modern exit poll is as much a media event as a methodological exercise. Packaged with graphics, debates and breathless commentary, it fills the void between voting and counting with a sense of immediacy that may be more theatrical than analytical. That said, to dismiss them entirely would be too easy. Exit polls do serve a purpose in sketching broad contours, highlighting regional variations and offering clues about voter sentiment. For political parties, they are early signals and act as tentative guides for observers. Taken together, this cycle’s exit polls suggest a broad, if tentative, pattern of the BJP consolidating in the east and north-east, and opposition alliances regaining ground in parts of the south, and continuity prevailing in key states. But patterns are not outcomes and only counted votes confer legitimacy. It is only on May 4 when the sealed electronic voting machines will deliver that clarity. They will determine whether Bengal witnesses a political rupture or a resilient incumbent, whether Assam’s stability holds, whether Kerala’s pendulum swings back, and whether Tamil Nadu stays its course. (The writer is a senior journalist and political analyst. Views personel.)

Black Warrant: Right Answer to A Crucial Question

Updated: Jan 23, 2025

Tihar Jail

Tihar Jail is a prison complex which is one of the largest complexes of prisons in India located in Tihar within Delhi. Black Warrant, helmed by the talented filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane, takes us on a journey inside this prison to show what exactly goes on behind the walls. Black Warrant, a seven-part OTT series released on Netflix is based on Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer co-authored by jailer Sunil Kumar Gupta and journalist Sunetra Chowdhary.


The story unfolds from the point of view of Sunil Kumar Gupta (Zahan Kapoor) from the point he steps in for the face-to-face interview for the job of ASP in Tihar Jail. He is taunted right through the interview because he lacks the physique expected of a jailor, appears timid, diffident and nervous. He does not get selected. The other two candidates, portrayed brilliantly by Paramveer Cheema as the Sardar and Anurag Thakur as the Harianvi bring across the multiple shades in their characters extremely well. The disappointed Sunil is both surprised and happy when a tall, handsome and very charismatic man (Siddhant Gupta) helps him get reinstated. When a curious Sunil asks around who that English-speaking, suave man is, he learns it is Charles Sobhraj. The film ends when Charles Sobhraj escapes his five-star cell just after the assassination of the then PM Indira Gandhi in 1984.


The story begins with the preparations for the hanging of Billa and Ranga for the killing of Sanjay and his sister Geeta Chopra in August 1978. The flashbacks of the brutal killings and rape are cinematographed in grainy Black-and-white which gives it a texture of a past and also softens the brutality. The hanging takes place in January 1982 and the series begins a little before.


Black Warrant is a journey about the toughening up of the soft-natured, tender and shy Sunil Gupta, a staunch vegetarian who could not utter a single maa-behen gaali and is taunted by his two colleagues for this. For such a soft-natured young man, it is a big challenge to stand and watch the hanging of the two killers, never mind the brutality of their crime. But he begins to train himself to gain a strong physique, practices swear words and cuss words in secret followed by practicing it on the prisoners. By the end of the series, Sunil Kumar Gupta has grown in confidence, in stature and in strategy which pushes him to open a Legal Aid cell for prisoners who do not have the funds to appoint lawyers to fight their cases.


As the aged Saini (Rajender Gupta), the jail accountant says, “most of the prisoners are under-trials behind bars for years with their cases not having reached the courts. Many of them are suspected of being innocent but have no means to fight their cases.” Sadly, the same Saini is falsely accused of corruption in order to save the actually guilty Head Jailor Rajesh Tomar (Rahul Bhatt) and his boss (Joy Sengupta) who have cut down on the number of blankets to be given to each prisoner and pocketed the difference themselves. The jail librarian is a doctor who hired two killers to have his wife killed for a meager sum of Rs.500. The two killers are hanged but the doctor gets to meet his lover secretly in the prison every week in exchange for a handsome agreement with the jail staff and the two killers.


Tomar is corrupt, true, but he also takes care of his staff each one of who is open to violent attacks by the prisoners. He has created a small garden in the jail complex and handles it himself. He does not quite like it when Sunil begins to question him but does not make any attempt to undermine or punish him.


Each of them is quite unhappy in their personal lives. Tomar’s wife has walked out of with the growing daughter. Mukhopadhyay, the Jail Super (Tota Roychoudhury is brilliant) has a very unhappy married life. Cheema becomes an alcoholic because his brother has become a rebel back home and the happy-go-lucky Harianvi guy was having a torrid affair with Mukhopadhyay’s wife. Sunil Gupta’s girlfriend Priya leaves him in the end.


The entire series is strongly character-driven and the incidents naturally emerge out of the characters and their interactions, revealing layer by layer, the toughening up of Sunil Kumar Gupta with Zahan Kapoor bringing off the most outstanding debut-performance in recent times. The tragic struggles of the prisoners where there are already three gangs at war with each other, one involved in alchohol smuggling, one pushing drugs through the prison and a Sardar gang as well, all with the connivance of the top prison brass who take their cuts from these behind-bars dealings. Sunil, however, brings radical changes in the prison environment by the time the series ends on an open note without being judgmental about anything or anyone.


The production design is wonderful, beginning with Tomar’s well-furnished office, through Charles Sobhraj’s three-star room with posters and cut-outs of his crimes, down to the lower middle class home of Sunil and his parents and the prison cells with their dirt, the simmering anger among the prisoners and their desperation to get out.


The music and the sound design are excellent and so is the razor-sharp editing which cuts through the scenes like a sharp knife but softens in the scenes within Sunil’s middle-class home with the neighbor who begs for some “prison food”.


Why does the judge break the nib of his fountain pen after signing the death warrant of a prisoner? Black Warrant might just give you the right answer!!!


(The author is a film scholar. Views personal.)

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