When Yogendra Yadav-led CSDS came out with the astonishing figure of 185-201 seats for the National Democratic Alliance many experts and mediapersons, who were predicting Nitish’s victory, were surprised by the CSDS figures. Only on November 22 evening a prominent social scientist, while taking part in a regional TV channel of Bihar, questioned the very methodology of the exit polls.
Lalu Yadav and his comrade-in-arm, Ram Vilas Paswan, ranted against the psephologists and the media for hatching a conspiracy.
Today Yogendra Yadav is clearly the winner. He has proved that he may be wrong in predicting the result of Karnataka Assembly election more than two and a half years back, but is always right so far Bihar is concerned.
Yogendra has nothing to do with Bihar. He is originally from Haryana and was brought up in Sri Ganganagar in Rajasthan. He did his higher studies in Delhi, which also became his karma-bhoomi.It is here that in early 1980s that he came in contact with Bihari students.
Predicting any election may be slightly easy job for psephologists but doing so with such a pin-pointed precision is certainly an achievement.
In 2004 Lok Sabha election CSDS was the only agency which said that Lalu Yadav’s RJD would get something between 22 and 24 seats out of 40 and it got so much. In October-November 2005 Bihar Assembly election it gave 140-odd seats to the NDA and it won 143. In 2009 Lok Sabha election and in the latest Assembly election it proved cent per cent correct in its prediction.
The CSDS stood by the figure even when other agencies were giving something around 150 seats to the Nitish-led National Democratic Alliance. Some mediapersons were, in private, even talking about likely hung Assembly. Even many BJP and Janata Dal (United) leaders were initially accepting the CSDS figures reluctantly. State BJP president, Dr C P Thakur, too said that he had not much faith in the exit polls as they often go horribly wrong. But the CSDS proved all of them wrong.
Even the break-up figure of different parties given by the CSDS is correct. The NDA won 206 seats––115 by the Janata Dal (United) and 91 by BJP. The RJD got 22 and LJP three, when the CSDS predicted maximum of 32 seats for the alliance. It gave Congress just six to 12 seats and it actually won four.
While appearing in CNN-IBN Yogendra Yadav said that there may be three per cent margin of error, which can certainly be ignored.
Lalu Yadav might have exploded against the media but in private he always believes what CSDS oredicts. So while doing so in the two Press Conferences, which he called after the Exit Poll results, he appeared somewhat shaky.
Politically he has been decisively defeated by Chhote Bhai (younger brother) Nitish Kumar but in the field of poll prediction he was trounced by another Yadav––Yogendra.
The CSDS has managed to restore the faith in the art of psephology, which many people often pooh-pooh.

Comment

comments...