Election 2019: Exit Polls Will Be Proved Wrong, Says AIADMK’s Palaniswami
Palaniswami said that come election results day, AIAMDK and its allies would win all Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
Tamil Nadu chief minister Edapaddi K Palaniswami on Monday sought to make light of the exit polls that suggested a bad show by the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, saying he had himself proved wrong similar predictions of losing in 2016.
Palaniswami said that come election results day, AIAMDK and its allies—including the Bharatiya Janata Party—would win all the Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu and the one in Puducherry, adding that the exit polls were more of “imposing of opinion”.
“In 2016 (assembly election) also, such exit polls were done and they suggested that in Salem, the AIADMK will win only three seats and that even I will lose (from Edappadi seat in Salem),” he said. “But I won with a difference of 42,000 votes even as the AIADMK won 10 seats against the three (mentioned in those exit polls).”
“This is what exit polls are all about. They are imposing of opinion,” the Tamil Nadu CM said, claiming that the predictions would be proved wrong this time as well.
Asked about the exit polls suggesting a good show by ally BJP across India, Palaniswami said he was referring only to Tamil Nadu as the “AIADMK is not a national party, but a regional one”.
“In Tamil Nadu, the AIADMK and alliance parties will win all 38 seats, besides the one in Puducherry. Further, our party candidates will win all the 22 seats where bypolls were”held," he said. Elections to the Vellore seat was rescinded after the recovery of a huge amount of cash.
The AIADMK’s participation in the union cabinet will come up for discussion only after the election results are declared, Palaniswamy said, accusing the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam of opportunism in the same breath.