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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.)

Hindutva’s Weird Foot-Soldiers

A farcical censorship row at Bhopal’s lit fest shows how in trying to protect Hindutva from imagined enemies, its most overzealous foot-soldiers have embarrassed the very ideas they claimed to defend.

Syed Akbaruddin, easily among the most effective communicators, was singing paeans for Narendra Modi’s foreign policy; a top Pune industrialist, Aditya Pittie, was fondly talking of ‘Viksit Bharat’ vision while detailing his book on the theme. Earlier, Bhupendra Yadav, Union Minister, discussed his book on BJP’s rise whereas Amitabh Kant and Rajiv Kumar, both former heads of NITI Aayog under BJP government, dissected economic policies and presented development perspectives of the government and then Vikram Sampath dealt at length on Veer Savarkar.


Where did this happen? Well, all this action was under the banner of the Bhopal Literature and Art Festival at the Bharat Bhawan, an iconic multi-arts complex designed by famous architect Charles Correa in past few years. It was here the tribal artistes Bhuri Bai and Durga Bai Vyam (both Padmashri awardees) were not only felicitated, but their beautiful exhibitions were also put up by the Society for Culture and Environment, a non-profit group that hosts Bhopal Literature and Art Festival (BLF) since 2019. BLF promotes tribal art and its practitioners who are normally found on the sidelines. They were brought into the mainstream and their art celebrated. The non-English speaking tribal artistes from 10 states participated this year at Bhopal.


Then arrived Aabhas Maldahiyar, in January 2026. The young architect-turned author of a successful book on Babur made BLF ‘famous’ overnight, thanks to his session which never happened. Why? Because a small, self-seeking ‘Hindutva group’ in Bhopal possessing nasty nuisance value under its own government, opposed it.


Needless Furore

No sooner than Aabhas landed in Bhopal, some right wing, ill-informed and biased individuals, led-guided by a Sangh-supported newspaper, created furore around the book which none of them cared to read. A low-circulation Hindi newspaper printed a story opposing BLF and accused the hosts of inviting an author who, they thought, was pro-Babur. They did not bother to speak to the brilliant writer nor to the organisers to ascertain facts.


The three-day popular Fest is organized with the support of MP Government and many Indian philanthropists. The Society, an ensemble of historians, journalists, former bureaucrats, army officers and architects, got together in 2018; conceived an idea of having a festival around books, knowledge and arts to promote India’s veritable soft power. MP had no such unique Lit Fest before.


Raghav Chandra, a creative former IAS officer from MP and, an alumnus of Harvard University, is the altruistic brain behind BLF.


Books and controversies are not new to any part of the world, but what happened in Bhopal was bizarre. The illiterate elements who threatened to disrupt BLF and forced the police to cancel the session of Maldahiyar, slated on January 10, went against their own ideology and its proponent who came to Bhopal for the first time.


A large posse of police suddenly swooped down upon state-owned Bharat Bhawan when the inauguration of the 8th edition of BLF was happening. Sahitya Akademi Awardee Hindi author Govind Mishra, 86, was there to inaugurate the Fest along with Mumbai-based well-known theatre personality Waman Kendre, the chairman of Bharat Bhawan. Interestingly, BJP has been in power close to 25 years in MP where an author was set to expose the rule of Babur but was denied the opportunity. A dejected Aabhas said: ‘’I was not there to glorify Babur but to tell people that he was anything but tolerant towards Hindus’’.


Distorted Facts

The travesty of facts is that the right-wing forces in MP succeeded in their efforts to block a BLF session, something that will gladden the Communists. Freedom of expression was muzzled. But a ‘learned’ vice chancellor of national journalism university, wrote official letter to culture minister Dharmendra Lodhi against BLF without finding out truth. Incidentally, the V-C had got his book released at the hands of Dr. Mohan Bhagwat a few years ago at the same Bharat Bhawan where he does not want a Lit Fest to happen. After that he climbed up the ladder rapidly not to look back ever.


Curiously, the newspaper’s report led to the orchestrated protests by an ignorant lot and ignited controversy out of nothing. The group, having been stunned following the author’s long post to PM on X, later began training their guns at the BLF organisers to level false charges and hide their big blooper. Raghav Chandra refutes allegations of foreign donations saying not a single paisa had been collected from abroad. ‘’If they think Australian or French authors read out their books at BLF means foreign funding, I can only pity them’’, he quipped, adding ‘over 700 scholars, painters, poets, Hindi writers, students and tribal artistes assembled under BLF umbrella in eight years and praised our efforts, so some people are jealous’.


Satish Jha, who resided in the US for many years, attended the BLF for two years, including this January. He observed: ‘It was the quiet opera of the heartland…the story of BLF is of a quiet rebellion against noise, a sanctuary where ideas are not shouted but heard, where the heartland’s voice is neither romanticized nor drowned out but amplified with care.’


While it may look like a storm in a teacup, the outcome of the entire drama created by Hindutva forces exposed themselves badly as an illiterate lot instead of taking on the Babur author or the organisers - which was their aim. They did more damage to Mohan Yadav government and to ‘Hindu philosophy’ than to a neutral, non-political literary group.


(The writer is a senior political and environment journalist based in Bhopal. Views personal.)

 


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