)
And, this is what India’s highest poll-conducting body is planning to do, following a TV news channel’s sting operation code-named ‘Operation Prime Minister’, which shows how opinion polls can be manipulated by research agencies. The TV channel named 11 research agencies, including big names such as CVoter, which supply poll data to many news organisations.
In an email response, CVoter’s Yashwant Deshmukh said, “We are the most open and transparent agency in India. We have always maintained impeccable credibility. All journalists are always welcome to visit our office and see the process. So many have been seeing our process so openly and writing about it all the time. It’s painful to see my honesty and objectivity is twisted in such manner to put us in the dock. We condemn this and will force them to put things in the right perspective.”
A senior EC official said, “We have reminded the Union government a dozen times since we made our first request to ban opinion poll and exit poll surveys in 1997…Opinion polls influence unlettered and undecided voters. They can misguide young voters, too.”
The government has prohibited publication of exit polls but left opinion polls untouched. But now, at the end of a second term, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance has suggested a complete ban on all such polls.
This, however, has been dismissed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which, according to recent election surveys, is riding high across the country ahead of the elections. “It is against freedom of the press. People start talking about manipulation of opinion polls when it doesn’t suit them,” BJP spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi said, while hitting out at psephologist and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Yogendra Yadav.
AAP said ‘Operation Prime Minister’ indicated a political conspiracy to manufacture and manipulate public opinion.
“There is an attempt by the BJP to manipulate the coming Lok Sabha elections,” Yadav told reporters. “If the BJP wants to manipulate opinion polls, the Congress is scared of public opinion and would like to use this opportunity to ban opinion polls,” he added.
The AAP sought a regulatory framework in this regard.
Separately, this was also suggested by Rajdeep Sardesai, editor-in-chief of IBN18 Network. “There should be a regulatory body, possibly under the oversight of the Election Commission.
There should be a code of conduct for polling agencies through which they could be asked to disclose things such as the sample size and the margin of error,” Sardesai said. “Banning of these polls is censorship and against the freedom of speech. If there are some rotten eggs in our profession, identify and isolate them. They should be banned. But polls are not arithmetic which will always be right. There is a difference between a poll going wrong and being manipulated.”
For newspapers, there are certain recommendations from the Press Council of India — newspapers publishing opinion polls are expected to name the institutions that carry out the survey, the sample size, the methodology and the possible margin of error.
Jai Mrug, political analyst and psephologist, said after ‘Operation Prime Minister’, all media organisations would have to carry out due-diligence, rather than leaving everything to the psephologist. This, however, introduces an element of discretion in a highly scientific exercise. Of late, predicting election outcomes has become a lucrative business. Such a poll across the country could cost up to Rs 100 lakh.
