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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.)

Say Cheese! The Artist Will See You Now

Updated: Mar 3, 2025

Be it a king or a commoner, the portrait remains a paradox, reflecting reality and illusion in a single frame.


caricature
Jonathan Yeo, King Charles III official portrait, 2024

A caricature artist beckons you to sit for a few minutes as you wander along a tourist avenue. You indulge them and leave with a permanent marker drawing on paper. The exaggerated facial features make you smile. The next day you are at a studio for a passport photo in harsh white light. “Don’t smile,” the photographer tells you as you sit stiffly against a white backdrop. Very few would be fortunate to have an artist paint their portrait, notwithstanding the playful lament of John Singer Sargent, the leading portrait painter of the Edwardian era: “Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.”


Juan Gris, Portrait of Pablo Picasso, 1912
Juan Gris, Portrait of Pablo Picasso, 1912

A portrait goes to the core of one’s very being, forcing a confrontation between existence and perception. Photographer and writer Paul Caponigro states the dilemma: “It’s one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it’s another thing to make a portrait of who they are.” Can any medium truly capture a person as they are? As they perceive themselves to be? Fashion photographer Richard Avedon goes further: “A portrait isn’t a fact but an opinion - an occasion rather than a truth.”


The daguerrotype changed the fundamentals of portraiture, introducing a novel way of being documented in a two-dimensional format. Photographs could capture a subject as no realist painter could, and photographers became a new kind of artist. Modern portrait artists who use photography as their medium would consider the poignant belief that a photo steals a person’s soul, a compliment of the highest order. To be able to convey the true and complete essence of a person is a formidable, if impossible task. Henri Cartier-Bresson said, “In a portrait, I’m looking for the silence in somebody.” His portraits of Mahatma Gandhi are now iconic. In photojournalist Raghu Rai’s black and white portraits of Mother Teresa, Ustad Bismillah Khan, and leading figures from all fields, he in his own words, “picked up a fact of life, and that fact will live forever.”


But even with the ubiquitous presence of photography, a painted portrait continues to offer something unique and intangible. Sitting for a portrait is an intimate act between an artist and their model. Even if they are working off a photograph, allowing someone else to represent who you are takes courage and faith. Artists from Mughal durbars created exquisitely detailed, stylized royal portraits, replete with symbolism. They represent ideals of beauty, wisdom, statesmanship and power, aesthetically sublime, yet conveying the gravitas of the emperor, portraying him as he wanted to be seen and remembered. President Obama’s portrait by Kehinde Wiley shows him on a chair almost engulfed by “nature and symbolic flowers that reflect both his personal and professional history.” In the 2024 official portrait by Jonathan Yeo, King Charles III seems to emerge like a phantom from a background constructed of violent, red brushstrokes. This jarringly contemporary rendering is an especially enigmatic choice for a man who has spent decades as king-in-waiting while advocating for a return to traditional and conservative architecture and art practices.


Portraits of those not necessarily running the world offer even more room for artistic freedom and interpretation. There’s Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, a portrait so popular that poems have been written about her beguiling smile. M.V. Dhurandhar’s portrait of his wife, is a masterpiece of academic realism, and yet conveys something deeper lurking beneath the surface. Raja Ravi Varma portrays his models with finesse, while also imbuing them with classical virtues sometimes dictated by the commissioning client. Whistler’s portrait of his mother is an intently observed study of motherhood, austerity, and the melancholy of ageing. Grant Wood’s American Gothic, is more than a portrait of a farmer and his daughter, it is also a statement on the mid-western rural ethos of the 1930s. Colleagues and friends – Husain and Ram Kumar’s – portraits of each other have an informal ease, exuding warmth and compassion. Juan Gris’ 1912 Portrait of Pablo Picasso pays homage to Cubism, with the torso, neck and head deconstructed into planes that defy the structure of a human body - and yet he is identifiable as Picasso. Each of these portraits is as unique a representation of its subject as it is a revelation about the mind of the artist who painted it.


Picasso once asked, “Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?” The conundrum lies in defining the word “correctly.” Whether royal or plebe, we persist in wanting to be portrayed as something we feel we are, in our hearts and souls, through whatever medium is available to us in our lifetime. In Camera Lucida, his book on semiology and photography, Roland Barthes writes, “great portrait photographers are great mythologists.” A portrait, quite simply, is a story about a person, told by the artist. The inimitable Salvador Dali however claimed, “I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.”


(The author is an architect, writer, editor, and artist. Her column meanders through the vibrant world of art, examining exhibitions, offering critiques, delving into theory and exploring everything in between and beyond.)

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