Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday rubbished opinion polls and pre-election surveys which have shown the Samajwadi Party winning fewer seats in the State in the coming Lok Sabha election. In contrast, its main poll adversary, the Bharatiya Janata Party, has been shown to win the largest number of seats.
In the 2009 Lok Sabha poll, the SP had won 23 seats and in the 2004 it won 35 seats from the State.
Stating that the agencies which conducted the opinion polls took a sample survey based on a formula, Mr. Yadav, who is also the SP State unit president, questioned the methodology of pre-election surveys.
“The pollsters don’t take the opinion of the Samajwadi Party workers. No one has visited Kannauj, Etawah, Mainpuri and Azamgarh,” the Chief Minister told journalists at the party headquarters here.
While acknowledging that there might be some element of truth in the opinion polls, Mr. Yadav refused to believe that the outcome of the pre-election surveys was entirely true.
The Chief Minister said that the actual electoral contest would be at the booth-level, for which the SP workers were ready. “No party can challenge the Samajwadi Party on the achievements of the government,” he added.
The SP government completed two years in office on Saturday.
Mr. Yadav said the promises made to the people since coming to power in March 2012 had been fulfilled.
For the first time, a development agenda had been formulated for the State’s progress and officers had been made accountable.
He parried a query on the possibility of the SP president Mulayam Singh also contesting from Azamgarh. Mr. Singh is the MP from Mainpuri.
Some reports claimed that he was likely to contest from Azamgarh, notwithstanding the fact that Havaldar Singh had already been declared the SP nominee from there.
