BJP pollster says it146;ll be 250; any lower, party should sit out

Till Andhra Pradesh AP Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu logged out, Bharatiya Janata Party8217;s resident psephologist and chief campaign...

Till Andhra Pradesh AP Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu logged out, Bharatiya Janata Party8217;s resident psephologist and chief campaign manager Pramod Mahajan8217;s Sudhanshu Mittal was looking at, what he calls, a realistic figure of a little over 270 seats but less than simple majority for the Vajpayee-led NDA.

As chances of re-booting looked slim with each passing hour, Mittal has since nipped and pruned his estimates which stand at 250, subject to Tamil Nadu going the AP way. 8216;8216;Plus or minus five is what I expect now. Anything less than that, BJP leader Atal Behari Vajpayee should sit in the Opposition,8221; he says.

Remind him of 300 that his party members chorussed about till exit polls silenced them, Mittal dismisses them as wishful. He adds that the BJP will better its tally from the last time. 8216;8216;It will be more than 182 this time,8221; he estimates.

With Naidu trounced at the Assembly polls, and the Congress bouncing back after nine years, Mittal says the extent of drubbing did come as a surprise. 8216;8216;We did not do a survey for Andhra Pradesh. As per our calculations, we were getting 20 seats for the BJP in its alliance with the TDP at the Lok Sabha polls and were aware of the anti-incumbency wave sweeping AP,8221; he says.

He dismisses the near-successful preditions of other pollsters by stating that it is easy to predict landslide victories. Mittal and Co have not attempted a pre-poll survey/or an exit poll in Tamil Nadu where he has pegged the fortunes of the party at 16. 8216;8216;But you can never tell,8221; he cautiously adds.

As for the surveys conducted in other states, the BJP has commissioned the Research and Development Initiative, which has predicted 33 seats in Uttar Pradesh, with a 26 plus in Bihar. For Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, both BJP bastions, Mittal is looking at seats over 24 and figures over 19 in Rajasthan. As for Karnataka an internal survey revealed 17 seats for the BJP-JDU. Mittal, often seen on TV, says: 8216;8216;The sample size is way too small as compared to ours. In UP alone, we had a sample of two lakh while the sample size for Orissa was 55,000,8221; says Mittal.

Morever, the same research agency is tossing different figures in different phases. 8216;8216;Shouldn8217;t someone explain the shifting stance,8221; asks Mittal.