Ticket aspirants approach agencies for surveys of constituencies

Shyam Sundar Vattam | NT

Bengaluru: In Karnataka where elections to 224 members legislative assembly are scheduled for 2023, sitting legislators and MLA aspirants eager to make a comeback are leaving no stone unturned to convince their political bosses about their prospects by hiring private agencies to prepare survey reports on the mood of electorates in their respective constituencies, to brighten their chances for a ticket.

Leave alone political parties, even the MLA-aspirants and sitting legislators are approaching private agencies to secretly undertake a survey of their respective constituencies to study the voters’ minds, issues that required immediate attention.

All these measures are aimed at wooing electorates and winning their hearts ahead of D-day. If the private survey agencies are to be believed, a majority of legislators and ticket aspirants belonging to various political parties are making a beeline before their offices to test the water before the polls.

Many of these aspirants are even reluctant to take the help of their followers for feedback from the ground –Zero fearing they might mislead their political bosses in order to be on their good books. Hence, they are approaching private agencies for what they felt was an unbiased survey of constituencies.

These surveys are being conducted to assess the impact of anti-incumbency on poll prospects of sitting legislators, to know whether the voters have been indeed happy with their performance in the last five years.

“There has been a rush of netas for such agencies to know what’s in the store for them before the electorate seal their fate in the ballot boxes,” an owner of a private agency on the condition of anonymity told News Trail.

“Most of the enquiries are coming from the candidates seeking to contest on a Congress ticket. There are also a few enquiries from prospective BJP candidates. So far, there has been no inquiry from any Janata Dal (Secular) candidate. Such feverish demand for surveys is a new phenomenon in state politics. This could be because there is a possible neck and neck competition between BJP and Congress Party on the cards in the coming polls,” he added.

The ticket aspirants, according to some other private surveying companies, are seeking the services of youths ready to work in the field to study and understand the pulse of people. The sitting legislators want to weigh the plus and the minus points of their performance in the constituency and factors bothering the voters.

Besides they also get feedback on caste combination, issues that can be raised to win the voter’s confidence. For the private agencies, it takes about 20-25 youths per constituency to do the sample survey. “What they (young surveyors) would do is to select people from a cross-section of the society and collect information from them about the constituency. After the ground survey, they would come back and prepare a detailed report which would be handed over to the person concerned. I cannot share the cost of such a survey but it is in lakhs because of the work involved in it. Hitherto, only political parties used to take the help of such surveys. Now the practice has percolated to the candidates’ level. We are doing a survey of the Assembly constituency. But, days are not far when prospective candidates would seek such reports on the ward in the City Corporation elections,” a private agency owner said. A candidate who wishes to contest on the Congress ticket told this correspondent that it was not possible to get an unbiased report from his own sources due to one or other reasons. Therefore, he had to depend on a private agency. It was important to get the survey done to understand the mood of voters in the particular constituency- whether they are happy or angry about the sitting MLAs- the votes of various castes. This is also to find out if the electorate wish to have a new representative, the leaning of voters-right, left or center and other important information which are considered helpful before approaching the voters. Seeking to drive home the point on such an exercise, one prospective candidate explained, “The survey report would be shown to the party bosses at the time of deciding tickets. We don’t mind spending a few lakhs on such pre-poll exercise than losing out on crores of rupees. We are sure that the survey report will be accurate with all details and give an insight on the mood of voters,” enough to pave their way to the poll fray.