Close on the heels of the exit polls giving BJP a remarkable breakthrough in Bengal, State Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee rejected its findings saying “gossip” of exit polls was being done to match a likely EVM tampering by the BJP.
Even as most Bengali news channels put BJP’s tally between 12 and 23 pulling down Trinamool Congress’ seat to “anywhere between 20 and 25 seats” the Chief Minister said “I don’t trust Exit Poll gossip. The game plan is to manipulate or replace thousands of EVMs through this gossip. I appeal to all Opposition parties to be united, strong and bold. We will fight this battle together.”
She said, “When I say something I say with some thought behind it,” adding “no one is God’s angel to presage things. In 2016 they had nearly got us defeated. There is a plan in it. This is a conspiracy. They are trying to feed this to the market to establish the truth.”
Secondly she said, “the conspiracy is to dishearten the opposition move so that they cannot activate their alliance.” This “gossip will shoot up the share market” from tomorrow because some business houses have huge stake in it.”
She reminded how Prime Minister Narendra Modi had in a meeting said that TMC MLAs were in contact with him and after May 23 the State Government would fall adding “there is a conspiracy going on against democracy and against Opposition parties and against Bengal.”
She said that she had spoken to many national leaders and everyone was supporting her view.
“I appeal and advice all the opposition leaders to keep a watch on the strong rooms and the EVM to thwart a foul play.”
One of the popular Bengali channels gave 24 seats to TMC, 16 to the BJP and 2 to the Congress. The Left for the first time after Independence drawing a blank according to the post-poll survey seeing its voter percentage going down to about 5 per cent from 30 percent in 2014.
Another channel put the toll for TMC to 28, Congress to 3 and BJP to 11. A third channel said the BJP would get 19 seats, the TMC would get 22 seats and the Congress would manage only 1 seat of Behramopre.
