Raju Binjola, a close aide of Uttarakhand BJP spokesperson Munna Singh Chauhan had accurately predicted the vote share of both Congress and BJP in many key booths of the constituency more than a week before the results were announced, on Facebook. Now, questions are being raised over the accuracy of his prediction.
On March 2, Binjola had predicted in a post that as per his evaluation, the BJP will win 37,590 votes, Congress 32,572 and others 6,523 in the Vikasnagar constituency.
Shockingly, when the results were declared on March 11, BJP got 38,895 votes and Congress 32,477 – quite very close to what he had predicted.
In booths such as Dhalipur, Bhimwala and Kata Pathar, the result predicted by Binjola were almost on point. For example, he had predicted 750 votes for Congress at Dhalipur and the party got exactly the same. Likewise, in Badwa, he predicted 260 votes for BJP, and the party got 287. Besides, at Nawabgarh, the prediction for BJP was 1,200 votes and the party received 1,235 votes. He had predicted 410 votes for BJP and the party got 501 at Kedarwala.
On the other hand, the prediction for Congress was 1046 votes in the booth and the party received 957 votes. At Dhakrani, Binjola predicted 4,000 votes for Congress and the party got 4,324. In the same booth, he predicted 2,380 votes for BJP and the party got 2,093 votes.
Senior Congress leader Navprabhat who fought against Chauhan told TOI that he suspected something fishy in the way Binjola had exactly predicted the results. “How can someone make so accurate a forecast unless there is some hanky panky going on?” he asked.
After Navprabhat filed a PIL in the Nainital HC alleging tampering of EVMs, HC on Thursday ordered seizing of all the EVMs in the constituency.
However, Binjola said that his estimation was based on what he had observed on the ground. “On voting day, I took out my two-wheeler and visited all the 135 polling booths of Vikasnagar constituency. I spoke to people from different age groups, caste and religion,” he said. He said that the majority of the people he met claimed they had voted for BJP.
“Even Muslim women said that they were in favour of BJP. The numbers predicted by me were the result of hard work and correct assessment of the ground situation. In localities where Congress had a stronghold, I mentioned that in my estimation, so it is not as if I gave only the BJP’s position.”
In the meantime, Munna Singh Chauhan said that “unnecessary controversy was being created about the issue.”
