Shashi Tharoor interview: ‘Exit polls have gone overboard … Worst-case scenario, there will be considerable improvement in Congress, Opposition performance’

A day after the exit polls projected a massive win for the BJP and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the Lok Sabha elections, with some even saying that the party could inch closer to its target of 400 seats, senior Congress leader and Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor tells The Indian Express that he finds the numbers “shocking”. The numbers shown by the exit polls “seem to bear no connection to the kind of feedback” he has been getting from the ground, Tharoor says.

Excerpts:

The Congress’s message to the voters was clear: this election is about their families and interests rather than about temples or the oratory of the Prime Minister or anything like that.

It had to be an opportunity for voters to ask themselves whether they or their families have benefited in any way from ten years of the BJP rule. When we talked to people, they realised that they had not seen any improvement regarding their income, job situation, or way of life. We delivered a powerful message along with the five Nyays (the Congress’ poll promises) … The message is that we will actually have specific things to do to address the long-standing problems of unemployment, drop in income and inflation.

We expect the party’s performance to be in the lower three figures and the overall INDIA bloc performance to be 295. When I say 295, that is the number that the Congress president has arrived at after consultations with all the other INDIA bloc parties.

I found them quite shocking, across the board. I campaigned in Kerala, Maharashtra, Bihar, Punjab … The exit polls seem to bear absolutely no connection to the kind of feedback I was picking up on the ground.

And it was never just me as an individual. I was also checking with other veteran poll