Just before the 2010 Bihar Assembly elections, a TV channel conducted an opinion poll which indicated that the then JD(U)-BJP alliance would get more than 170 seats. Participating in the panel discussion, JD(U) spokesperson Neeraj Kumar approved of the findings and asserted that the alliance would perform even better. The JD(U) leader was proved right as the alliance bagged 206 seats.

Three years hence, the JD(U), now divorced from the BJP and handed out not-too-bright forecasts, has communicated to the Election Commission that it wants opinion polls banned at least six months before elections.

“They are not opinion polls. They are paid news which affects the minds of voters,” said JD(U) national general secretary K.C. Tyagi.

Tyagi said the letter clarifying the party’s stand to the Election Commission was sent a week ago. The JD(U), in its missive, maintained that opinion polls should be stopped at least six months before elections “if it did not affect the freedom of the press”. He said large political parties were getting surveys done through their choice organisations and, hence, it was like paid news. “The last survey conducted in Bihar conceded that it had taken the opinion of only 2,800 persons from urban places,” Tyagi contended.

The irony of the party’s stand is that another prominent leader and MP, Shivanand Tiwari, has publicly ridiculed the Congress’s position that it was against such polls. “The Congress is making itself sound ridiculous by making such demands,” Tiwari said on Monday.

It appears that Tiwari is not in tune with his party’s stand. Till now, the JD(U) has never had objections to opinion polls. Since the Assembly elections of February 2005, most opinion polls have predicted handsome dividends for the party.

However, post the June split in the alliance, successive opinion polls started predicting that the JD(U) would get between 11 and 19 Lok Sabha seats of the 40 up for grabs in Bihar. What is worse, the latest numbers show a dwindling support base for the party whereas the BJP and the RJD, whose leader Lalu Prasad is in jail, have been shown to be gaining ground.

Chief minister Nitish Kumar has ridiculed opinion polls, saying they only had “entertainment value”.

When the party parted ways with the BJP, there was hope within the organisation that its support base among the EBCs, Mahadalits and Muslims would see it through in the majority of the seats in Bihar. But the opinion polls predict otherwise. “Each opinion poll serves to further demoralise our party workers and it was reflected at the recent Rajgir meet,” admitted a senior JD(U) leader, who spoke under cover of anonymity.

The BJP, whose leaders Narendra Modi and Arun Jaitley on Monday lashed out at the Congress for advocating banning of opinion polls and thereby gagging the institutions of freedom, has struck out at the JD(U). “When we were together, the chief minister spoke approvingly of opinion polls. However, now that the opinion polls are going against them, they are talking of banning them,” said BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi.

He recalled that earlier this year, opinion polls had suggested that the BJP would lose in the Karnataka Assembly polls. “Nobody talked about banning opinion polls then,” Sushil Modi pointed out.

Paswan demand: Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan too has demanded a ban on opinion polls.