In what looked like an attempt at a cover-up, Axis My India chairman and managing director Pradeep Gupta broke down during a live television discussion on how the exit poll numbers projected by his agency and India Today turned out to be starkly off the mark. The exit polls, released on June 1 after polling concluded in the country for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, had predicted over 400 seats for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). But the actual numbers completely contradicted this with the INDIA alliance putting up a good fight.

Pradeep had earlier rubbished questions of credibility, claiming that his agency has been spot-on in 65 out of the 69 exit polls conducted in the last 10 years. But he started weeping when an India Today panel comprising journalists Rajdeep Sardesai and Preethi Choudhry confronted him about the stark variations in the poll results. When asked about the failure of the Axis My India exit polls, Pradeep first went into defence, claiming that the agency “almost got it right” but later broke down, leading to the other panelists consoling him for “at least getting the overall winner right”. 

Axis My India had predicted a big win for the BJP in three major states – 28-32 seats in Maharashtra, 26-31 in West Bengal, and 64-67 in Uttar Pradesh. But the results came nowhere close to these numbers with the NDA securing fewer seats than projected and major national figures like Union Minister Smriti Irani trailing in Amethi. The same is true with smaller states like Kerala, where the NDA has been reduced to one seat against the predicted three.

Pradeep said that he “gracefully admits that Axis My India went wrong with the three big states”, citing that it was the Dalit and minority votes that may have shifted the BJP’s chances. When asked if they under-polled women voters, he gave a lukewarm response, mostly evading explanation. “We are not terribly wrong as you say. We have predicted that NDA will form government and we are right about that,” he said, breaking down soon after.

Many critics had slammed exit polls, including the one given by Axis My India, calling them paid and manipulated to create a pro-Modi wave across the country, as well as reap the benefits of the upward movement of the stock market.