Ahead of the last phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, which is to be held on 1 June 2024, a graphic (here, here, and here) allegedly showing the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat exit poll projection has gone viral on social media. This poll survey was allegedly conducted by the ‘India Today Group,’ which predicts the victory of the BJP with a vote share of 33%. We fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: ‘India Today Group’s’ exit poll survey predicts a win for the BJP in the Amritsar Lok Sabha constituency.
Fact: ‘India Today Group’ has not released any exit poll result as of 30 May 2024. They have refuted this claim by calling it fake and saying that their survey results will be released only after the ban on exit polls by the ECI is lifted, which will be on 1 June 2024 after 6:30 pm. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To check the veracity of the viral claim, we searched the internet with relevant keywords to see if the ‘India Today Group’ has released the exit poll result of the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat. This search did not yield any credible results to validate the claim. Factly also did not find the viral graphic on any social media handles of the ‘India Today Group.’
In fact, the ECI banned the Exit polls from 19 April 2024 till 1 June 2024.
India Today’s news anchor Rahul Kanwal called this graphic fake through a post on ‘X.’ He cautioned the public against falling for such Fake polls.
Acknowledging this and addressing the viral graphic, Aaj Tak, which is part of the ‘India Today Group’, refuted the claim in an article confirming that they have not released the exit poll of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections yet.
According to this article, they will only release it after ECI’s ban period ends after 6:30 pm on 1 June 2024. They also clarified that India Today or Aaj Tak never releases exit poll data for one Lok Sabha seat.
To sum up, the India Today Group has not released any exit poll results for the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat predicting a BJP win. The viral graphic is fake.
