The Hindu : Karnataka News : BJP unhappy with `partisan' nature of exit polls

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 30, 2004

Karnataka

Karnataka

BJP unhappy with `partisan' nature of exit polls

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, APRIL 29. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has said that there is a similarity between the elections and the exit polls: both are prone to rigging. The Election Commission had to take note of the "partisan" nature of the exit polls and the impact they had on the election process.

The spokesperson of the BJP State unit, S. Suresh Kumar, told presspersons here today that the commission should ponder over the impact of the releasing the results of exit polls before the entire poll process was completed.

The NDTV exit poll conducted after the first phase of the elections had indicated 120 seats for the Congress in the Assembly elections in the State, but the same channel was saying after the second phase that it was "too close to call." The exit polls in a way helped the Congress campaign, and such a partisan pattern was not a healthy sign for Indian democracy.

Mr. Kumar said the Election Commission also had to take note of the discrepancies in the voters list and ensure that in future the fundamental right of the voter was not taken away. In this age of e-governance, it was a shame on the Government of Karnataka that a large number of voters had been left out of the electoral exercise. The BJP, he said, had pointed out to the Election Commission the discrepancies in the voters list during the elections to the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike and the Hungund byelection, but nothing much had been done.

The BJP suggested that the Election Commission could think of bar-coded smart cards as voter identity cards as they were tamper-proof and would help put an end to proxy voting.

The General Secretary of the State unit, Arvind Limbavalli, said that despite requesting the commission and the State Government to ensure peaceful polling, there were several instances of violence during the second phase.

In Gadag, BJP workers were attacked and the police had helped the perpetrators, he charged. Similarly, Congress workers had attacked BJP workers in different places in Dakshina Kannada, Karkala, Somwarpet, Athani, Sagar, Sorab and other places, he added.

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