Support for Narendra Modi surprises Congress leaders

Hyderabad:The surge in support for Narendra Modi has surprised Congress leaders. Speaking to this newspaper, Medchal Congress MLA Kitchennagari Laxma Reddy said, “We conducted many surveys recently in Telangana. I did one for myself in Medchal. Voters prefer the Congress clearly in the Assembly polls, but there is a sudden jump as far as Modi is concerned. In my last survey report, only three per cent of voters preferred Mr Modi; now 35 per cent of voters are going to vote for Mr Modi en bloc. This is surprising.”

The People’s Pulse, a private agency that conducted a survey in Khammam Lok Sabha constituency on behalf of a political party found that 58 per cent of voters preferred Mr Modi in the Lok Sabha polls, but BJP candidates registered a negligible 0.5 to 2 per cent in all Assembly segments.

If one goes by the combined poll trends for Lok Sabha and Assembly elections held in 2009, the TD and its allies got 1,39,19,616 votes in the Assembly elections and  1,40,91,933 votes (1,72,317 votes plus) in the Lok Sabha election

The Praja Rajyam got 67,93,382 votes in the Assembly elections and 66,56,500 votes (1,36,882 votes less) in the LS elections. The Congress got 1,53,78,586 votes in the Assembly elections, and 1,63,72,896 (9,94,310 votes plus) in the Lok Sabha elections. This clearly shows that nearly 10 lakh voters prefers the Congress in the LS polls than in the Assembly polls. The Congress won 33 LS seats out of 42 in the state, but got only 155 Assembly seats out of 294.