Lok Sabha polls: Who will get credit if BJP performs so well in MP?

Almost all exit polls have shown a thumping win for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Some polls have given the party as many as 27 of the 29 seats in Madhya Pradesh. The million-dollar question now is: Who will get credit if the party performs so well in the state? Former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is the favourite as he addressed more than 140 public meetings. If the meetings he attended in other states are taken into account, the count will be more than 220. In the run-up to the election he, on an average, addressed five to six meetings every day. But the leader of the Opposition, Gopal Bhargava, is in no mood to give all the credit to Chouhan. "Shivraj Singh Chouhan might have ruled the state for 13 years but this time we are going to outperform the Congress because of the Modi magic," he told a gathering.

No to media

The Enforcement Directorate has issued an order on Tuesday, asking all its officers posted in the headquarters and the headquarters' investigation unit to keep away from "unwarranted interaction with the media". "It has been observed that certain information relating to ongoing investigations have been published in the media. This information relating to impending action may jeopardise the interests of ongoing investigations," it said. Henceforth, it said "any officer other than the authorised officer if found interacting with the media should be brought to the knowledge of the principal special director or undersigned (director) immediately". The order stated "any deviation will amount to dereliction of duty and liable for punitive action". It said an earlier circular issued in this regard in November 2018 “has not been followed in right spirit”. The ED is a central probe agency that enforces two major laws in the country — the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and Foreign Exchange Management Act — to check high-value economic crimes and black money.

Kamal Haasan’s ‘false votes’

While the exit poll results have led to a mad scramble among political parties, one finding in particular has left many baffled. A survey in Tamil Nadu predicted Kamal Haasan's Makkal Neethi Mariam bagging 3-6 per cent of the votes polled in the Kanchipuram constituency. But the problem is that the party did not contest that constituency because the Election Commission of India did not give permission to its candidate to contest. The television channel that commissioned the survey admitted the mistake and said that it was "a human error".