As the Trinamool Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party slug it out in West Bengal, 'leaked internal surveys' purportedly by poll strategist close to the action admitting defeat, have muddied social media and led both parties to blame each other for peddling misinformation.
The alleged viral letters and surveys claim to show party functionaries and/or strategist admitting to doing badly in key constituencies. Both the BJP and TMC have promptly called out these posts calling them fake and accused each other of trying to spread misinformation claiming that the opposite side is behind these documents.
West Bengal assembly elections are being held in eight phases which started from March 27, 2021, and will end on April 29, 2021, with the counting of votes taking place on May 2, 2021.
Fake letter purportedly written by Dilip Ghosh claims internal survey predicts dismal position of the party; warns of infighting among BJP leadersA letter claiming to be written by BJP West Bengal president Dilip Ghosh to BJP president Jagat Prakash Nadda claims that an internal survey shows the BJP is expected to do poorly and warns of infighting among BJP leaders.
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The letter was rubbished by Dilip Ghosh who retweeted the Twitter account Office of Dilip Ghosh which in turn called the letter fake. The tweet read, "This is a fake letter being circulated on the name of Shri Dilip Ghosh. BJP West Bengal has made a complaint to the Election commission and will lodge a police complaint to take criminal action against those sharing this forged letter."
I-PAC 'leaked survey' on Nandigram
A screengrab has been doing the rounds on social media claiming that it shows a leaked survey by Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC), a political consultancy group founded by Prashant Kishor which is managing the election strategy for West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's party. The photo is being shared claiming it shows an internal survey by the group which predicts that Banerjee will lose from Nandigram. Nandigram is set to vote in the second phase on April 1, 2021.
Click here to view, and here for an archive
Click here to view, and here for an archive
The photo was rubbished by I-PAC who called it a fake and alleged that BJP West Bengal was circulating the 'fake survey'
The second screenshot showing an 'internal survey' claiming that BJP's Suvendu Adhikari will have an average of 52 percent of vote share and Mamata Banerjee will be at 42 percent was also dismissed by the TMC calling the document fake.
Fake Intelligence Bureau Survey
Another survey that has been doing the rounds on social media is a fake Intelligence Survey report which purports to shows a 'confidential report' claiming that the TMC would win the West Bengal election.
The document reads, "As per IB's final on - ground assessment, the TMC is leading with a huge margin in the upcoming West Bengal Assembly elections 2021. The TMC is expected to win 204+ seats in the state . Barring the two main political parties in the region, TMC and BJP , all other regional parties in the state failed to make any significant gains"
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The viral document is fake as the IB does not conduct election surveys and is India's domestic intelligence, internal security and counter-intelligence agency that deals with garnering intelligence from within India and also execute counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism tasks.
The same viral document was also called fake by the Press Information Bureau's fact-checking arm - PIB FactCheck which stated that no such on-ground assessment was carried out by the IB.
BOOM has previously debunked such fake polls and surveys that have gone viral just before elections falsely claiming that one or another is doing badly in the polls or is set to win.
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