What is your assessment of the Congress’s campaign?

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 realized 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.

How do you expect the Congress and the INDIA bloc to perform?

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.

Did the Exit poll numbers come as a surprise?

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 observers, ordinary workers, and the media. And so I had a very clear impression of what we were going to do in each place. The exit polls have completely gone overboard in giving everything to the BJP in ways that I just did not see on the ground.

How do you see exit polls forecast for South India, including Kerala?

I am utterly shocked. I saw all the polls were giving them 1-7 seats in Kerala, which is madness. Even those polls giving them 1-3 or 2-3, I find it completely unbelievable. Unless there is some mysterious magic that has worked, it is not possible for the BJP to win a single seat in Kerala.

Same in Tamil Nadu. I have talked to several people in Tamil Nadu and this (prediction) is far-fetched and preposterous.

But you believe their vote share could go up?

It may. In some areas. But the BJP, for the last several elections, has been stuck at a 12-13% (vote share) level in Kerala. I do not see that changing dramatically. But if it went up slightly, I would not be totally surprised. Not as much as the polls are suggesting. But, a couple of percentage points more would not be a shock.

I should mention that in the last elections, one of Kerala’s leading newspapers ran a front-page story based on an exit poll saying that I had lost my seat. I won it by (a margin of) one lakh. The fact is that exit polls are by no means infallible or foolproof. Given the various realities of the Indian social condition, it is also not guaranteed that their sampling is serious or scientific.

If the broad trend shown by the exit polls — that the BJP is in for a hat-trick — holds, where does it leave the Congress?

If the results bear out some of these things in the exit poll trends, they still won’t be as bad as these numbers suggest. I am confident that even if we are wrong and we lose the elections, the Congress’s performance will be a substantial improvement from 2019.

Until we see the exact numbers, it is very difficult to say what the impact will be on the Congress. If we have improved in many key states in a significant way, I think what we will see would be building on that improvement for the Assembly elections that lie ahead.

I do not see this election as being in the pattern of 2014 or 2019. I think even in the worst-case scenario, there will be a considerable improvement in the overall performance of the Congress and the Opposition.