Dubai: As Indian election battle reaches feverish pitch, a prominent TV channel in the country made a major blooper when it accidentally beamed what many believe are exit poll results.
On Thursday afternoon, India Today released a TV promo that showed its managing editor Rahul Kanwal giving an insight into the TV channel’s ‘Election Intelligence Dashboard’ ahead of May 19 when the exit polls could be officially telecast. Rules prohibit TV channels from releasing exit polls until the end of the last phase of polling.
“I just want to show you what’s happening behind the scenes,” says Kanwal in the video as he points to a computer monitor, flashing a man of India and ‘data’ from the exit polls.
It appears that the viewers took his advise to heart. Within minutes of the video, scores posted close up shots of the data on social media.
As it turns out, the ‘behind the scenes figures’ in the promo were ‘predicted election results’ based on what Kanwal said was an exit polls of 700,000 voters.
The survey predicts 177 seats for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) -- 177 less from what it secured in 2014.
The UPA alliance led by Congress is shown to get 141 seats, up from 65 last time around. The biggest gainer are regional parties with a staggering 224 seats in their kitty against 109 in 2014.
As the video went viral on social media, India Today’s official Twitter handle hastily tweeted out an explanation: “We understand your excitement about the clip! Sorry to disappoint you. We too are waiting anxiously for the data. This is visibly a promo with a dummy data.”
“They were just dummy data, the tech checks are going on in preparation for the 19th,” Kanwal was quoted as saying in a report.
However many viewers found the explanation unconvincing. They asked why the ruling NDA is shown t be losing in dummy figures.
“For all you know it could be true,” tweeted M.K.
Times Now’s editor-in-chief Ravi Shivshankar also posed the same question: “Is it true?”
“How can they compile exit polls data without completion of all phase polling,” wondered Srikanth P.
Responding to one such tweet, Kanwal’s colleague India Today anchor Rajdeep Sardesai said “no such poll has been done”.
