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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.)

‘Woh Shimla ice-skating rink tha…’

Updated: Jan 27, 2025

Bollywood

Mumbai: Bollywood fans still marvel at the rocking and memorable Asha Bhosle number, “Shokh Nazar Ki Bijliyan…” - composed by the legendary Madan Mohan for Raj Khosla’s spooker, “Woh Kaun Thi…” (1964). The film featured the ghostly Sadhana Shivdasani wandering the deserted pale hills at ungodly hours, a ravishing beauty sporting just stark white saris despite bone-chilling temperatures, but creating scares in dark cinema halls.


It was considered the first song shot entirely on the smooth, chilly, open-air rink of the 105-year-old Simla Ice Skating Club – SISC, (Shimla from 1972), with actress Parveen Chaudhary and Manoj Kumar gliding in their winter finery, against a backdrop of snowy hills and picture postcard scenes, though all in mesmerizing black-and-white.


Today, the famed SISC’s ice-skating rink is thawing and the vicinity is a ghost image of its own lush beauty seen in that seat-edge mystery thriller - and some others like “Aa Gale Lag Jaa” (1973) or “Mera Naam Joker” (1970) – thanks to the combined effects of global warming and indiscriminate development in its surroundings that hasten its untimely and unnatural demise.


An adventure sports buff from Mumbai, Firdaus Irani - who visited SISC last week with family - was speechless to notice that the ice-skating rink was almost reduced to a puddle, and others like him were staring at it in silence.


When contacted by The Perfect Voice, the SISC Media Secretary Sudeep Mahajan admitted that this winter (2024-2025), the rink functioned for barely a few days as it didn’t freeze naturally as in the past over a century, hampering a host of its snow sports activities.


He said that besides commoners, it was a favourite with bigwigs who have visited/skated here, including former Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi, former Vice-President M. Hidayatullah, ex-CM of Tamil Nadu M. G. Ramachandran, state CMs, Ministers of the centre and states, etc.


Among the glam crowds who chilled there was the entire Raj Kapoor clan over generations, Sanjiv Kumar, Manoj Kumar, Sadhana, Rajashree Shantaram, Saroja Devi, Simi Garewal, Kumkum, Nana Patekar and many more, sliding over the 3-inch-thick glassy cold surface without a care.


This winter, a concerned Mahajan said SISC could barely conduct two dozen ice-skating sessions as the rink remained mostly watery – compared with 160-170 sessions-plus in the 1950s-1960s, with the packed season usually blooming from mid-November to February-end.


Locals blame the prime culprit as climate change, the hacking of greenery in and around Shimla – the summer capital of the British Raj for 83 years till Independence – once known as the 'queen of hill-stations' at an altitude of 2,276 metres, but now getting slowly poisoned by the toxic atmosphere.


There is indiscriminate construction going all around, two huge escalators for the Shimla Smart City Project, use of diesel-powered generators, growing human (around 2.80 lakhs) and vehicular population in the hill-station, a Himachal Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation bus depot barely a stone’s throw away, plus many eateries and stalls spewing fumes and raising a stink.


“All these are hastening the rise in local temperatures and pushing the SISC rink - which is Asia’s oldest (since 1920), biggest, open-to-sky, naturally-freezing ice-skating stadium measuring 1,500 sq.metres - to the brink,” rued Mahajan.


In fact, the rink was born out of fluke in 1920, when an Irishman – Jack Blessington, who manufactured carts, rickshaws and carriages in Simla – noticed that domestic taps, and even a bucketful of water he had forgotten outside his home one evening, froze overnight.


Surprised and delighted, he decided to experiment in a small open ground near his house, by throwing some buckets of water at night… and Lo!, the next morning it had solidified into an inviting cool skating rink…


That was in the 1920 winter, and later he opened it to his other British or European friends and their families to cavort there… rekindling their wintry memories back home, till Blessington, 57, succumbed to a gunshot in Feb. 1938, as per official records.


Post-Independence it was unveiled for the wide-eyed natives and others who thronged there, aided by the 97-km long Kalka-Shimla Railway and the quaint toy-train became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1908, said Irani, who travelled by it.


With the ice-rink thirsting and sweating for ‘low temperatures’, Mahajan said the SISC plans to develop an all-season indoor ice-skating rink on its premises costing around Rs 35-crore, but struggles for resources.

“Though we manage to break even, SISC needs help from the government or corporate CSR schemes. All must unite to preserve this unique heritage, not only in India but Asia, and believed to be the only one of its kind currently in the world,” said Mahajan.

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