Such surveys have been commissioned by at least five BJP MLAs, including two top cabinet ministers.
NEW DELHI: Political leaders in Madhya Pradesh, mostly from the ruling BJP, where elections are due less than a year away, are commissioning ground-based surveys to gauge the people’s sentiment for themselves and for their expected competitors.
These surveys, being carried out by Maharashtra and Delhi based private agencies, as per details accessed by The Sunday Guardian, have been booked by at least five BJP MLAs including two top cabinet ministers.
It is expected that more such surveys will start taking place as the November 2023 scheduled election date approaches. These surveys are being funded by anxious leaders from their own pocket and are not a survey that the state and the national unit of the BJP generally carries out in an election state.
One of these ministers, who till the last election was being introduced as a possible Chief Ministerial candidate, had narrowly won from an Assembly seat that houses a very well-known temple. Interestingly, this recent survey has predicted that the said minister will not be able to win this time given the strong anti-incumbency against him which has compounded due to his image of becoming arrogant and inaccessible after being a minister since 2005.
In the last election that took place in November 2018, the Congress had formed the government after BJP was limited to 109 seats in the 230-seat Assembly. However, the Congress government fell in March 2020 after 23 Congress MLAs resigned and defected to the BJP, reducing the Congress to 92 MLAs from 114 that it had originally won. According to people aware of these developments, the survey agencies are charging their fees in eight figures to engage political experts along with individuals who are meeting people on the ground to arrive at an accurate picture. In many cases, these surveys are being done under the supervision of experienced journalists who are being engaged by the surveying companies.
As per the data accessed by The Sunday Guardian of a similar survey done in the last election on behalf of multiple BJP leaders, the findings of the surveyors, to a certain extent, matched the actual election result.
According to a former BJP Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament, these surveys are relatively a new phenomenon. “I have been witnessing the involvement of such survey companies since the last few years. Earlier, the tickets were denied or allotted on the basis of the feedback that we got from the party workers and our own interaction with members of the society. Now feedback from such surveys play an important role,” he told The Sunday Guardian.
A political expert who has been a part of such surveys in the recent past said that the MLAs are using these surveys to understand their political weaknesses and work on them before the party mandated surveyors come on the ground as the election approaches.
“It is common knowledge that political parties, especially the BJP, decide their ticket distribution through such surveys. Hence, sitting and prospective MLAs, in a bid to put their house in order before the party mandated surveys start, are commissioning surveys from their own pockets,” a member of one of the survey agencies active in Madhya Pradesh right now, said.