Don't support blanket ban on opinion polls, says Sitaram Yechury

New Delhi: CPI(M) today opposed any blanket ban on opinion polls but said these should not be published for a “reasonable period” like from the date of notification till the date of polling. Maintaining that electors should be given a reasonable time to reflect on who or which party should be voted, it said such a decision would protect the voter “from being unduly bombarded by propaganda and thereby distorting his or her rational voting behaviour.”

“In today’s India, when the scourge of ‘paid news’ is on the rampage, the concept of freedom of expression and media freedom to disseminate objective news is gravely distorted to the extent that at times all objectivity of news is sacrificed at the altar of unscrupulous profit making. “In such conditions, the scope for manipulation of opinion polls to unduly and wrongly influence the electorate is immense. “Hence, reasonable restrictions on a particular freedom in this Indian context needs to be very seriously considered,” senior CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury said in an editorial in the latest issue of party organ ‘People’s Democracy’. Under these circumstances, he said it was fair to suggest that “while there should be no blanket banning of opinion polls, this should not be published for a reasonable period, say, from the date of statutory notification of the election till the polls are completed. “The length of this period, however, would have to be defined and announced by the Election Commission after serious consultations and deliberations,” Yechury said. He also came down heavily on BJP for changing its stand on the issue, saying in 2004 it had favoured ban on publication of opinion polls after the statutory notification for elections is issued.

Observing that BJP and a section of media were terming the exercise as an attack on freedom of speech and media freedom, Yechury said it was strange that BJP “should now decry this exercise as denying the people their basic right to information. In the first place, opinion polls are not information. They are, as the name suggests, opinions. And, opinions are meant to influence.” Clearly, “BJP is seeking to influence voters in an undue fashion before the elections through manipulated opinion polls and if that fails as it did in 2004, then plead for banning of the publication of such polls! “This, in itself, betrays the reality that opinion polls are often used as tools for electoral propaganda rather than being news that conveys objective opinions of those surveyed,” the CPI(M) leader said. He said the EC had a decade ago sought political parties’ opinion on the issue of exit polls, as also opinion polls. It had then come out with a public document stating: “The unanimous view of all the participating members was that conducting the opinion polls and publishing results thereof should not be allowed from the day of issue of statutory notification calling the election and till the completion of the poll.” Globally too, several democracies also restricted such polls. “In many Western democracies, a practice is followed where the central idea is to allow a period of silence or reflection to permit the balancing out of opinions and views before the ballot day,” Yechury said, adding such restrictions were “nothing new”.

PTI