Former professor of quantitative techniques and statistics department of the university, Dr PN Mishra announced the reward of a large sum to challenge “guessers and various television news channels and print media” to prove that “psephological methodologies adopted to predict poll results are scientific”.

Mr. Mishra said that anyone, be it visual or written media or even fortune tellers, is welcome to take up the challenge and win the cash prize by correctly predicting the ‘seat-wise’ results of the Assembly polls in the two states .

“But they can join the bounty race with a rider that those who failed to predict correctly must apologize publicly,” he told this newspaper.

The retired teacher said some people, especially “so-called” astrologers and black magicians, are seen spreading superstitions in the society by making poll predictions without any scientific basis.

He challenged even media organizations that predict poll results to prove that their methodology is scientific.

“I am a professor of quantitative techniques and statistics and I know very well how to analyze evidence to reach a scientific conclusion. How can media organizations, whether visual or print, take close to 1,000 or 2,000 samples from such a vast base of voters to predict,” he said.