EC seeks SC fiat on opinion polls

During the last general elections held in 1998, the Election Commission had issued guidelines banning the publication of opinon and exit polls for the duration of the polls since it apprehended that the dissemination of the results would unduly influence voters exercising their franchise at a later date.

As the Commission had also made it clear that these guidelines would apply to all future Parliament and State Assembly elections, this time too the EC on August 20 reiterated the guidelines, banning the publication of exit and opinion polls from September 3 till the last day of polling on October 3.

The recent announcement by a national daily, The Times of India, that it would publish opinion surveys 48 hours before the different phases of the poll, prompted the Commission to approach the Apex Court for a directive, according to Commission sources.

In view of Monday’s stay on the ban on advertisements by the Madras High Court, and in view of the daily’s decision to go ahead with the publication of the survey, the Commission apprehends that a direction from the Supreme Court would clarify the situation.

“It has now come to the Commission’s notice that a section of the media appears to have misconstrued the guidelines as evidenced by a statement of The Times of India … That it intends to publish the results of survey and forecast of the seats of each phase (of the elections) just before the campaigning ends for each phase of the election schedule announced by the Commission,” the application said.

This would have amounted to a situation “where the EC is faced with the prospect of what it considers a serious infraction of its guidelines, particularly those in relation to the exit polls."

The EC said it has approached the Supreme Court on account of the misinterpretation of these guidelines by a section of the press that perceives the election process to comprise of separate and distinct exercise of franchise in each given polling area and not as a single dynamic exertion by the voting public in the whole country.

The critical role that the media plays in ensuring free and fair elections has meant that the publication of opinion polls in the interim period between two phases of polling could compromise the fairness of the election process.

The Commission also clarified today that the Madras High Court has only placed a stay on the Commission’s order banning political advertisements in the electronic media.

Following a petition filed by a private television channel, Sun TV, the High Court on Monday imposed a stay on the operations of the EC’s guidelines that advertisements and publicity relating to political parties should not be telecast on the electronic media.

The Madras High Court granted an interim stay, citing the stay granted by the Andhra Pradesh High Court on the same issue.

Since the matter as reported in the news media implied that the stay was applicable to both advertisements and opinion and exit polls, the Commission had to perforce issue the clarification that the High Court stay applied only to advertisements, Commission sources said, adding that the ban on opinion and exit polls would continue till the last day of polling.

“The stay is only to restrictions imposed on advertisements and publicity through electronic media for election coverage and not to publication and dissemination of results of exit and opinion polls”, the Commission said.

It was only on receiving the actual High Court order that even the Election Commission realised that the stay applied only to advertisements and made no mention of the exit and opinion polls.