The upcoming elections to the Telangana assembly to be held on November 30 are going to present a see-saw battle between the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi and the opposition Congress.
Several survey agencies have predicted that the Congress has an edge over the BRS and only a few have said the BRS will score a hattrick with comfortable majority. A couple of them have predicted even a hung assembly with the Congress emerging as a single largest party.
Now, a latest survey conducted by Sri Atma Sakshi (SAS) group, which claimed to have done accurate surveys in the past, has predicted that the BRS will scrape through in the assembly elections with a truncated tally in its seats.
According to this survey, the BRS might get a minimum of 64 seats – the magic figure for forming the government is 60 seats. And the maximum number of seats it can, if it puts in hard work, will be 70 and there will be a keen contest in at least six seats.
The Congress is expected to win a minimum of 37 seats and a maximum of 43 seats, while the BJP will end up with 5-6 seats. The MIM will retain its six or seven seats, while the others (like BSP and YSRTP or independents) might get 1-2 seats.
The SAS survey says the BRS is leading with a 42.5 percent vote share, while the Congress was likely to secure 36.5 percent and the BJP could get a 10.75 percent share. This was the ground situation shared by the organisation as on October 28, when the Congress party released the second list of 45 candidates.
In a few seats where there could be close contests, the BRS is leading in three seats, while Congress is leading in two and the BJP in one seat. The Silent Vote Factor (SVF) was noticed to be 1.75 percent in the State.
Generally, 80 per cent of the SVF would support the political party that creates confidence and momentum among the public just before the elections, the SAS Group report said.
The organisation has conducted three surveys so far in different time frames. The first survey was conducted from July 18 to August 17, followed by the second survey between August 21 and October 30. The third survey was conducted from October 2 to 28.
Ahead of the 2018 elections, the SAS group had predicted that BRS (then TRS) would win 85 to 89 seats and the party had won 88 seats. Similarly, it had said the Congress would secure 19 to 20 seats and the party won 19 seats. BJP was expected to win one seat and it won only one seat.