Team News Riveting
Lucknow, October 23
Even as Uttar Pradesh is gearing up for the assembly elections due next year, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) today advocated for banning all kind of pre-poll survey.
The BSP has written a letter to the Election Commission demanding a complete ban on all kinds of pre-poll surveys from six months before the elections. The BSP Supremo and former Chief Minister of UP Mayawati had recently alleged that all the pre-poll surveys by media groups were rigged and hence it should be banned six months before the elections.
In an 11-page letter addressed to the Chief Election Commissioner, the National General Secretary of BSP and Rajya Sabha MP, Satish Chandra Mishra, has written to, “ban pre-poll surveys by media outlets six months before the elections in order to enable voters to exercise their rights to cast vote freely, fairly and uninfluenced by the misleading projections in the pre-poll surveys shown by media outlets which are sponsored surveys.”
Mishra also stated how his party was surprised with a pre-poll survey in September, which allegedly tried to lower the morale of the BSP workers. Mishra has further stated in the letter that to conduct free and fair elections, this step of banning pre-poll surveys was inevitable. The BSP leader pointed how some agencies predicted in their exit polls that BJP was winning in the West Bengal elections but the result was just oppositive.
The Samajwadi Party Chief and former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav had earlier supported the issue raised by the BSP chief and had alleged that all such surveys were dubious and were brought by money.
