Will storm to power in UP, claims Rahul

A confident Rahul Gandhi on Friday hit back at naysayers, asserting that the SP-Congress alliance was set to storm into power in Uttar Pradesh, and brushed aside exit poll predictions of an edge to the BJP.

“Do you remember exit polls for Bihar? We have seen such predictions earlier as well. Our alliance is winning. We will talk on March 11,” Rahul told reporters in Parliament on Friday.

Earlier, Rahul chaired an informal meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party to discuss the strategy.

It was agreed that the Congress will raise issues such as the sharp increase in the LPG prices, violence on university campuses in the initial days of the Budget Session.

However, a section of Congress Parliamentarians appeared nervous after the exit polls predicted a win for the BJP in four of the five states that went to polls in February-March.

But Rahul tried to calm the nerves of his party leaders by recalling the Bihar exit polls, which had predicted close fight for the JD(U)-RJD-Congress grand alliance with the BJP in the 2015 assembly elections. Eventually, the alliance won 178 seats while the BJP was a distant second with 58 seats.

“I will not give an opinion on opinion polls,” Rahul quipped when asked about the post-election surveys projecting BJP victories in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa.

 “If the exit poll predictions come true, we will see a more aggressive BJP. Hope these projections are not true,” said one opposition leader clearly reflecting the nervousness in their camp.

At the party briefing, AICC spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said the Congress was “supremely confident” of a victory in the elections, particularly Uttar Pradesh.

“We have fought elections with a straight bat. We have fought elections on the front foot, without resorting to divisiveness or subterfuge,” Singhvi said.

On the exit polls, Singhvi said such exercises were successful in homogenous societies such as Europe and the US, and not in a diverse country as India.