NEW DELHI, April 21: It is not too difficult to divide or polarise Indians on any election day. But going by reactions of leading media outfits on Wednesday to the country's first leg of general elections the country appears torn down the middle over the projected outcome
, which will be officially not known until May 13.
With most pollsters standing to lose something of their credibility, considering that only one of them could be right in the cackle of some half a dozen of opinions, the battle to win the trust of readers in the case of newspapers and the millions who swear by their TV channels looks set to intensify over the next week.
Political parties too have become deeply anxious, as they interpret to their advantage the wild range of conclusions from the "exit polls" after Tuesday's election were held in 140 parliamentary constituencies.
Privately, the stance may be different. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee went into a huddle with senior officials of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to respond the array of possibilities.
"No clear winner after Round 1," declared The Hindustan Times in a front-page lead headline spread across seven columns. Mr Vajpayee's National Democratic Alliance (NDA) holds on, barely," it said.
The Hindu, also pinning it headline on the exit polls, said they showed the BJP front was ahead. "NDA takes first innings lead," echoed The Times of India in an eight column lead. "Confusion in Maharashtra, NDA retains hold in Bihar, it went on.
To allay any misgivings or even loss of trust, the Times of Indiaexplained at the outset that its conclusions could be wrong. "Exit polls are usually more accurate than opinion polls but they too have gone horribly wrong," the Times recalled. The exit polls in Bihar (2000), Tamil Nadu (2001) and Rajasthan (2003) had been wide off the mark.
The Hindustan Times explained why it believes there were no clear winners on Tuesday, thus: the NDA alliance went into the first phase holding 88 of 140 seats from the outgoing parliament.
Three exit polls said they would now fall short of 88; one said they would gain. On the other hand, most of the exit polls said the Congress would gain from its low of 44 from the 1999 elections, to somewhere around 55 from Tuesday's first phase.
Whether the exit polls have done anything at all to give curious Indians a clue in the way western exit polls do is yet to be seen. But they have sent political parties scurrying to do a better job in the remaining three legs of the Lok Sabha contest.
The situation has ironically put the focus back on the Muslims in Uttar Pradesh with each side in India's most populous state counting on their support to scrape through. Mr Vajpayee took a head start in this endeavour on Wednesday. He met a group of Muslim preachers belonging to "Atal Bihari Himayati Forum" and told them that everyone had to live together in peace and harmony.
"It is not for any political reason or to get votes that I say this. I believe relations with (Pakistan) have to be improved and we have to improve relations with each other within the country," Mr Vajpayee said, after he met BJP leaders in a post first phase review.
The same Muslims were largely ignored in Gujarat only the other day with neither the BJP nor the Congress keen to be seen wooing them in the communally-polarized state.
