No opinion polls this election season?

The government is all set to have a law to ban opinion and exit polls once Lok Sabha and assembly elections are announced and till the last vote is polled. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Sep 3, 2008, 23:57:03 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government is all set to have a law to ban opinion and exit polls once Lok Sabha and assembly elections are announced and till the last vote is polled.

This proposal by the Law Ministry comes nine years after the Supreme Court struck down the Election Commission's executive order on the subject.

The Union Cabinet will on Thursday discuss the ministry's proposal to insert a new section, 126 (B), in the Representation of People's Act, 1951, imposing this restriction for all phases of elections in a state or in the country.

The proposal has the backing of all major political parties like the Congress, BJP and Left, which were consulted before proposing the amendment. Even the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, which looks into media issues, has supported the restriction while asking that it be extended to all forms of electronic media.

Television channels and newspapers widely use opinion polls to gauge the mood of voters whereas exit polls help pollsters predict the outcome of elections. The Election Commission, however, feels these polls could influence voters. "We wanted a ban on exit and opinion polls as they can manipulate or may have undue influence on the outcome of elections," a Commission source said.

Mahesh Rangarajan, who conducts political analyses on the basis of such polls, said: “I don't understand its purpose. It is undermining the intellect of Indian voters, who have repeatedly proved poll predictions wrong, showing that they are not influenced by such polls.”

But the Election Commission, on the demand of political parties in 2004, had asked the government to amend the Representation of People's Act to impose the restriction of such polls. The Law Ministry's proposal comes months before scheduled assembly elections in Rajasthan, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. General elections are scheduled for April-Mayay 2009.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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