Will opinion poll results influence voters?
Well, Election Commission thinks so. As the role of EC is to ensure free and fair conduct of polls, EC has written to the Law Secretary that it wants to implement the long proposed plan of banning publishing of opinion polls after a notification is released for polls.
EC also enclosed the opinions received from national and regional political parties on it. Only BJP gave its opinion against it. EC revealed to the law ministry that 5 national parties out of 6 and 10 regional parties have express their agreement to the restriction on the opinion polls.
The contention of BJP is that a restriction of such sort will obstruct the freedom of speech guaranteed by the Indian Constitution in Article 19(1)(A).
Congress party is in the opinion that the opinion polls are neither scientific nor derived from a transparent methodology. It is easy to manipulate the results by the parties in accordance to their vested interests. BSP supported EC by saying that the opinion polls tend to confuse voters. CPM is not against taking opinion polls but not supported publishing the results of it.
Ruling and main opposition are poles apart on the issue of opinion polls too!
The reason is easy to reckon. BJP is relying on the charisma of Narendra Modi its Prime Ministerial candidate to win the polls in 2014. After hectic touring and delivering attractive speeches, the opinions may change temporarily due to the immediate impact of the speeches. If a poll survey is conducted that will certainly show an influenced. There is a chance that other voters also may get influenced by the opinion poll result taking it as the general trend.
Whereas the Congress party is against it because it is not able to deliver an attractive speech compared to the ones of Modi and it makes a cause to worry for the party. The view is also clear with the comments of the UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi in her speech in Madhya Pradesh on Friday that speeches do not solve problems of the people and BJP failed in implementing the Government schemes thus depriving the people of Madhya Pradesh.
-SriJa
