Lucknow: Samajwadi Party has urged the Election Commission of India (ECI) to immediately ban opinion polls being telecast on different TV news channels ahead of assembly elections in five states, including UP.
“Ban, with immediate effect, the opinion polls being run on television news channels,” state SP president Naresh Uttam Patel wrote to ECI.
“The dates for the elections to the UP assembly were declared on January 8 and the nomination filing for the first phase of the polls is already over. The state is going to have polls in seven phases for which the last date of polling is on March 7 and counting of votes will be held on March 10. Several television news channels are running opinion polls that are misleading the voters, and the elections are getting affected. At the same time it is also an open violation of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) for elections… So for free, fair, fearless polls it is necessary to ban opinion polls on television news channels with an immediate effect,” the letter stated.
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