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...

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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.)

Faltering Flight

Correspondent
Nov 23, 2025
2 min read

The tragic death of Wing Commander Namansh Syal during an aerial display in Dubai has pierced the celebratory haze around India’s rising aerospace ambitions. The Tejas Light Combat Aircraft, meant to headline India’s growing prowess and self-reliance, instead nose-dived into the ground during a negative-G turn. A grief-stricken Indian Air Force (IAF) and a shocked nation now face questions that go beyond a single aircraft or accident.

While the IAF has launched an investigation, the symbolic damage is immediate. For a country keen to advertise indigenous capability, the incident could hardly have come at a worse moment. With 38 aircraft in service, nearly 200 more on order, and a growing role in India’s future fighter fleet, the Tejas had become a poster child of self-reliance. The Dubai crash has now dimmed that glow, even if temporarily.

Airshows, by design, flirt with risk. They are spectacles meant to compress an aircraft’s capability into minutes of daring manoeuvres. Even the best training cannot eliminate the fact that these displays operate on the razor’s edge of performance envelopes. History is full of grim reminders: the Mirage 2000 crash during Air Force Day rehearsals in 1989; the 2019 Surya Kiran mid-air collision; the Polish F-16 that crashed during a barrel roll this August; and the Spanish EF-18 that nearly flew into a beachside crowd after a momentary loss of control. That the Dubai accident occurred in such a setting is therefore tragic, but not unprecedented. What distinguishes this incident is the aircraft involved. The Tejas project has been haunted by delays, cost escalations and shifting requirements since its inception in the early 1980s. The aircraft finally entered service only in the 2010s, and fresh concerns were raised recently over delayed engine supplies for the upgraded Mk-1A variant. Critics of India’s defence R&D ecosystem will find easy ammunition in these events.

And yet, the aircraft itself deserves a clearer appraisal. By global standards, the Tejas has an exceptional safety record. It suffered no hull loss during development which is a rarity for a single-engine fighter and only one catastrophic failure since induction prior to Dubai, both circumstances in which pilots survived through ejection. In comparison, Pakistan’s JF-17 has endured multiple crashes, Sweden’s Gripen lost several prototypes to fly-by-wire glitches, and France’s Mirage family encountered repeated developmental accidents. Tejas’s delta-wing design and quadruple-redundant flight control system remain robust and admired by pilots who fly it.

India’s aviation missteps lie not in engineering talent, but in systemic underinvestment in research and a long history of state-led programmes that promised more than they could deliver. In 1961 India flew Asia’s first modern jet combat aircraft, the HF-24 Marut, only to abandon the momentum that could have made it an aviation power decades before China. The Dubai crash should not derail India’s indigenous aviation drive. Instead, this is the moment to confront structural weaknesses. India’s aerospace destiny lies not in retreating from risk, but in reforming the institutions that shape it.

The Exit Poll Mirage

Faltering Flight

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