These days, making predictions about the people’s mandate has become a fancy job for politicians. These leaders are simply talking through their hat about the outcome of elections without doing any proper field work to feel the pulse of the people.
In Andhra Pradesh, elections to the state assembly are still more than six months away. Though there were some pre-election surveys done by some reputed agencies and also some media houses, they cannot actually reflect the ground realities.
At the most, they give some indications of the probable outcome depending on the current scenario.
Only exit polls conducted after the polling give some near accurate picture of the election outcome, as the people speak up freely after exercising their franchise.
But some politicians have already started making predictions and giving warning signals to their party bosses, as if they have already read the mind of the voters.
Take for example, Telugu Desam Party MP from Anantapur J C Diwakar Reddy.
Nobody knows whether his maverick politician has commissioned any survey or not, but he says the TDP can come back to power for a second successive term in the state, provided 40 per cent of the sitting TDP MLAs are replaced by new faces.
According to him, these 40 per cent of the MLAs are facing anti-incumbency in their respective constituencies.
“Though people are happy with the performance of chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu, they are not happy with these sitting MLAs. If Naidu has to retain power, he has to drop them and replace them with new candidates,” he said.
JC, however, did not name who these MLAs are and who the alternative candidates are. Obviously, he has not done any survey, but was only making a wild guess.
Perhaps, JC’s own brother J C Prabhakar Reddy could be among these losers!
