Union Minister Jairam Ramesh has dismissed exit poll results as “only opinions” and said “as of now” it is difficult for him to see Narendra Modi as Prime Minister. “The Congress will do far better and the BJP will not do as magnificently as the exit polls show. The exit polls were wrong in 2004 and in 2009 and will be wrong in 2014 as well,” he told journalists here on Tuesday.
The exit poll results for Telangana were “completely off the mark,” he said, adding he hoped the Congress would form the government there.
Mr. Ramesh declined to answer a question whether the Congress would support a third alternative. “Let us see which party is in a position to take the lead. We want a stable, secular and cohesive government in which all parties share the responsibility of governance.”
Regretting that the last phase of electioneering for the Lok Sabha polls became “depressingly communal and polarised,” he alleged that the Muzzafarnagar riots were the beginning of the BJP campaign. “Even if we wanted to make the campaign substantive, it was not possible because the BJP was not in the campaign… it was an individual [Narendra Modi]. Despite our efforts, we could not make the campaign BJP ideology-centric.”
In contrast, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi brought spirit into his canvassing. He did not just take on the BJP and Mr. Modi but also kept the campaign party-centric, Mr. Ramesh said.
Mr. Gandhi would be given the credit if the Congress did well, he said. But the Minister ducked a question whether the young leader would be blamed if the party did as badly as the exit polls predicted. Claiming that the Congress was “outfunded” by the BJP, Mr. Ramesh demanded an expenditure audit of how much each party had spent on the elections.. He described as “obscene” the spending of money by the BJP, and rejected the charge that Congress candidates did not spend money as they faced anti-incumbency and felt that the party might not do well.
A positive outcome of the elections this time, he said, was the increase in voter turnout in the Maoist-affected areas of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Odisha, thanks to the development efforts of the UPA government.
As for the Aam Aadmi Party, Mr. Ramesh dismissed it as a “collection of individuals” and said it was a “platform” with no party structure. “From Day One I am saying they are brilliant in agitation and disastrous in administration. Even the Trinamool Congress, despite all its chaos, is a party.”
