Chhattisgarh Congress criticises pre-election surveys

Opposition Congress today criticised the pre-poll surveys which had projected the BJP as a winner in the Chhattisgarh assembly polls scheduled for this month, calling such opinion polls "fake" and "misleading".
Initially IBN's pre-poll survey had projected that the BJP would win 71 seats in the state, while a week later, the numbers of seats of the ruling party were reduced to 60 in a survey conducted by ABP News.
The decline of 11 seats in a few days clearly shows these surveys are sponsored and misleading, Chhattisgarh Pradesh Congress Committee general secretary Ramesh Varlyani told reporters.
"The fact is that people want change in governance here and all these surveys are fake and misleading people," Varlyani said.

The parameters adopted by ABP News and Nielsen for conducting surveys had no connection to ground realities, since merely 8,000 people in 45 constituencies were covered and it is unscientific to predict the poll winner based on that figure, he said.
He alleged that though the survey says that people are happy with the law and order situation of the state, figures show that crimes against women have increased here, while Maoists have reached urban areas.
"Senior Congress leaders were killed in a Maoist attack. So how one can say that the security situation is better in the state," he said.

Everybody had the right to present analysis and opinion in a democracy, but it should be unbiased and needs to contain facts, he said.