Hyderabad: Indian Political Action Committee, also known as I-PAC, debunked a “survey” attributed to it by right-wingers and supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which said that Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee would lose from the Nandigram assembly seat in the ongoing West Bengal elections.
In a tweet, I-PAC wrote, “Facing imminent defeat, @BJP4Bengal has now gone down to the level of using FAKE surveys in the name of I-PAC to keep the morale of their workers up!!”
The debunked survey, which reported that TMC would win just 80 seats in the West Bengal elections, was doing rounds on BJP’s social media circles for quite a few days.
Notable BJP-friendly organizations like Swarajya Mag and OpIndia carried the survey as well.
The TMC took to social media to claim that the survey was a fake one and questioned its credibility. It was finally confirmed by I-PAC, which said that it did not conduct any such survey and said that it was being spread by the “desperate BJP.”
I-PAC is a political advocacy organization owned by political strategist Prashant Kishor, who was hired by the TMC to help them win the 2021 state elections. Earlier, Kishor, in the run up to the assembly elections, stated that he would retire from political as well as public life if BJP won seats in triple-digits in Bengal.
The BJP is looking to dethrone Banerjee and win the state elections. However, given her street fighter credo, the incumbent chief minister, with help from Kishore, is likely to put up a good fight. But it may be noted that the TMC got a shock in the 2019 general elections when the BJP won 18 out of 42 Lok Sabha seats, while the TMC won 22.