The Congress on Thursday rejected the exit poll results, which showed victories for the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh Assembly elections.
An average of the exit polls predicted a win in 117 of the 182 seats for the BJP in the Gujarat Assembly and 64 for the Congress. A poll of polls projected a 47-20 seat share in favour of the saffron party in the 68-seat Himachal Pradesh Assembly.
Congress leader Manish Tewari labelled the exit polls “sensational”. “The interesting thing about exit polls is that they are a very sensational filler between the close of polls and when results come out,” he said on an NDTV show. “I think over the past 10 years, exit polls have been both right and wrong. In the case of Bihar, all the exit polls turned out to be wrong.”
Tewari added that the exit polls numbers “don’t add up”, and that he would withhold judgement. “We have seen exit polls in Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Punjab – all of them proved to be wrong,” Congress Spokesperson Shobha Oza said. “So how much can one trust the exit polls?”
Another party spokesperson Salman Anees Soz said “exit polls don’t have a stellar record in India”, and that it was no longer “inevitable” that the BJP would return to power in 2019.
Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti leader Hardik Patel told The Times of India that the Congress would win between 100 and 105 seats. “As far as the first phase only is concerned, the Congress will win 52 to 55 seats,” he said. “In the second phase, the Congress will win 42 to 45 seats out of the 93 [that went to polls].”
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