Known for his accurate prediction skills in the past, the senior politician was way off the mark during the Telangana Assembly elections held in December last year.
Image: Facebook/Lagadapati Rajagopal
Ex-Congress MP Lagadapati Rajagopal is in the news again as he has predicted that Andhra Pradesh will not throw up a hung Assembly result and expressed confidence that the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) would get another term.
“Telangana has a surplus budget and the people there chose car, whereas Andhra Pradesh has deficit budget and the people here are left with the cycle. This is only my calculation. However, no survey could be 100% factual. I have been doing this for the past 15 years out of my interest as a hobby. For a predictive survey report, wait till Sunday evening and for a factual one wait till May 23,” Rajagopal was quoted as saying.
He was speaking to reporters in Velagapudi in the Amaravati capital region on Saturday, where he also said that he would announce his exit polls survey results in Tirupati on Sunday evening.
Rajagopal said that actor-politician Pawan Kalyan would enter the Assembly for sure but was quick to add that the Jana Sena would get fewer seats in the election than Chiranjeevi's Praja Rajyam Party in 2009, which managed to win 18 seats.
Meanwhile, the ex-MP said that no party was likely to get a majority at the Centre, adding that a hung Parliament was likely. Commonly referred to as an 'octopus' for his accurate prediction skills in the past, the senior politician was way off the mark during the Telangana Legislative Assembly elections held in December last year.
Rajagopal had said that the Congress alliance would win around 65 seats and gave the TRS only 35 seats. He also predicted that a large number of Indpendent candidates would win. However, when the final results were announced, the TRS bagged 88 out of the total 119 seats up for grabs, while the Congress could only win a mere 19.
Ahead of the results, Rajagopal also got into a bitter public spat with TRS Working President K T Rama Rao, and accused the latter of hurting his reputation.
L Rajagopal was famously in the news in 2014, after he used a pepper spray in the House of the Parliament during the height of the Telangana movement for separate statehood. Known for his united-Andhra stance, Rajagopal took a self-imposed hiatus from state politics after the bifurcation of the state.
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