BJP basks in feel-good predictions

Buoyed by an opinion poll that predicted a majority for the BJP, the party said its prospects would improve further as balloting neared.

Buoyed by an opinion poll that predicted a majority for India's ruling coalition in next month's general election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Saturday said its prospects would improve further as the balloting neared.

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On the other hand, a despondent Congress made light of the findings, drawing consolation from the wide variations in different surveys and the inherent faults in sample size representation.

The NDTV-Indian Express-A.C. Nielsen survey forecast the BJP and its allies would win 287-307 of the 543 contested Lok Sabha seats, with the BJP itself set to improve its tally to 190-210 from 182 in the dissolved Lok Sabha.

"We expected these results," said BJP spokesperson Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi. "We believe that our prospects will improve further, since our campaign has started and the Congress does not seem to have any issues at hand."

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's stock remains high, with 72 percent respondents preferring him to the last prime minister to have ruled a full five-year term, P.V. Narasimha Rao, who headed the last Congress government.

Naqvi said from the time the survey was conducted till now, Vajpayee and the BJP had only improved in popularity ratings.

Asked about Vajpayee's possible successors, 38 percent respondents voted for his deputy L.K. Advani, a man long known to be the prime-minister-in-waiting.

As for the Congress, the dynastic preferences evidently spill over to voters as 18 percent rooted for Sonia Gandhi's daughter Priyanka to succeed her while 15 percent picked former finance minister Manmohan Singh.

Priyanka's elder brother Rahul scored with nine percent as possible Congress helmsman - this before his candidature from Uttar Pradesh' Amethi constituency was announced.

Former prime minister Narasimha Rao was the choice for eight percent of the respondents.

In the BJP's second-rung leadership, Sushma Swaraj (10 percent) was ahead of Pramod Mahajan (4 percent) and Arun Jaitley (2 percent) in the line of succession.

While unveiling their extensive findings, the pollsters cautioned that when the opinion poll was carried out, alliances had not been firmed up, names of candidates had not been announced and party manifestos had not been revealed.

These factors, along with India's historic victory in the one-day cricket series with Pakistan Tuesday, were bound to have some sort of an impact on the way India voted in the parliamentary polls, it was pointed out.

In a demoralising forecast for Congress president Sonia Gandhi, the poll predicted further depletion in her party's tally to 95-100 against the 113 members it had.

"The conclusions are obviously wrong," said Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi. "Anyone who knows the reality in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and so on would disagree with the conclusions."

Singhvi said a sample size of around 45,000 from an electorate of 660 million was bound to be inaccurate, irrelevant even.

"On the same day another private television channel (Zee TV) also conducted a survey that gave predictions widely varying from this poll - both cannot be right. Everybody knows these surveys are nothing to do with reality."

As many as 55 percent respondents agreed with the BJP's pitch of a "feel good factor", though a not unsubstantial 26 percent did not agree.

Notably, the survey found that caste was only a minor influence on voters, with 76 percent saying they did not care about caste while making their choice.

Most voters felt their elected representatives hardly ever showed their face in the constituency.

As many as 38 percent respondents said their MPs never visited their constituencies, while 36 percent said the MPs visited once a year.

The poll also predicted major gains for the BJP and its allies in Maharashtra (27 of 48 seats), Gujarat (24 of 26 seats), Madhya Pradesh (26 of 29 seats), Chhattisgarh (all 11 seats) and Karnataka (21 of 28 seats).

It said in India's most populous and politically key state of Uttar Pradesh, the BJP and the Samajwadi Party would claim 32 seats each while the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) would take 11 and the Congress just five.