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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.)

‘If they wanted to act against a particular leader, they should have called it XYZ scam instead of MSCB scam’

Updated: Oct 22, 2024

MSCB scam

The Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank (MSCB) has announced 10 per cent dividend for its shareholders for the financial year 2023-24. The Bank that had been in deep losses of around Rs 1,100 crore in 2010 touched the landmarks Rs 57,265 crore annual turnover, Rs 615 crore net profit, Rs 6,530 crore of owned funds and net worth of Rs 4,618 crore for the first time in 113 years of its operations. In an interview to The Perfect Voice’s Political Editor Abhijit Mulye the Chairman of the administrative board Vidyadhar Anaskar narrates the bank’s success story. Excerpts…


How the MSCB earned profit after being ruined?

Big Co-Operative institutions, that too primarily the Co-Operative Sugar Mills in the state are our primary customers. The bank had traditionally followed the principle of surety-based loans. It sounds good that Rs 100 crore have been lent against Rs 800 crore worth of a sugar mill. But, when loans turned bad it was realised that realising the surety property was not feasible. Hence, we took a different approach. We tried to raise the repayment capacity of our customers. For that we taught financial discipline to sugar mills. We developed a rating system and charged differential rates to the mills based on their ratings for financial discipline. This improved their financial health and our recovery. Secondly, we recovered Rs 1049 crore towards the default guarantee given to the sugar mills by the state government. This quickly brought drown our losses. But, that was not all. We had to work on several other aspects also.


You are the only cooperative bank in the country, which has announced pension to its employees. How?

Among the several steps that we took to put the bank back on the profit track majority were related to the employees. There were 3200 employees in the bank when I took the charge as the administrator. We brought in an attractive VRS scheme and now we have a total of 752 staff. After VRS we recruited some new staff also. We needed new skills and well educated staff. We gave them an extensive training. Then we brought in the pension scheme to ensure that the employees won’t leave. We have been setting aside some funds, around 0.25 per cent of our net profits, for the employee benefits. We used those funds to be able to give Rs 10,000 as pension for the employees.


What lessons did you learn from the previous mistakes?

As I earlier said all our loans used to be surety-based loans. But, we realised that it was easier to go in for out of court settlements than pursuing legal procedure to get back the lent money. We started ensuring the repayment capacity of our customers. We brought in a rating model for our customers based on their financial discipline, wherein they would get loans on lowest rates if they have very well maintained financial discipline. Initially people were weary of the scheme. But, once they realised the benefits, and they are huge since even one percent rate cut means huge when loans are in hundreds of crore rupees, they started falling in line.


Are you still providing loans to sugar mills?

As lenders, we now don’t just look at the assets they are holding. But we ensure that they have robust systems in place to be able to repay loans. We also realised that since the cooperative sugar mills are part of an ecosystem, it is difficult to sell them off. And only buyers one would get are from private sector. So, we came up with a new system of renting the sugar mills. We gave them back to the stakeholders on long term leases of 20-25 years while ensuring that they have good financial discipline in place. That way the ecosystem keeps working, rural economy keeps rolling and the rent we get goes directly to the repayment kitty, means we don’t have to worry about that. Once all this was set, we even came out with Atmanirbhar Scheme to disburse loans to all sugar mills, cotton ginning and pressing mills. With this scheme we lent support to them when they needed it the most and won their trust. Most of those loans have already been recovered.


There was allegedly a scam called MSCB scam. What is it?

I wonder from where the figure of Rs 25,000 crore was brought in. Scam can happen in disbursal of loans. If we consider that all loans disbursed during that period were ‘scam’ then the total loans disbursed during that period are around Rs 7,997 crore. If that is so, how can there be a scam of Rs 25,000 crore. I frankly feel that if they wanted to act against a particular political leader, they should have called it XYZ scam instead of calling it MSCB scam. It unnecessarily tarnished our image and several of our staff had to live under unnecessary stress for a long time.


What kind of help do you expect from government?

If Co-Operatives is brought under concurrent list much of our headache will be reduced. Also, the subject needs to be made a part of the school curriculum. Unless we do that the future for the Co-Operatives sector is bleak.


What are the future plans?

We at MSCB now have very strong financials. We are the top performer as per the performance assessment norms developed by the NABARD. And we are very close to the Bank Of Maharashtra in terms of financials. So, I would like us to compete with and surpass the nationalised bank. That is our target as of now.

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