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Cases against poll analyst Sanjay Kumar over wrong voter data, day after apology
District electoral officer of Nashik in Maharashtra says case filed against Sanjay Kumar for sharing misleading info about Lok Sabha and state elections 2024
A case each has been registered against psephologist Sanjay Kumar by the district electoral officers (DEO) of Nashik and Nagpur in Maharashtra for allegedly misleading voters with wrong data on the Devlali and Ramtek assembly segments for the Lok Sabha and state elections held in 2024.
“It is requested to all citizens to verify the info only from (Election Commission of India website,” the DEOs posted on X. It was not immediately clear what specific charges have been leveled.
Sanjay Kumar, a professor at Delhi's Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), had on Tuesday apologised for his X post on the Maharashtra elections, which wrongly reported a considerable fall in voter numbers in the two assembly seats compared to the Lok Sabha elections.
He said the error occurred due to misreading of a row by the data team.
“The tweet has since been removed. I had no intention of dispersing any form of misinformation,” wrote Sanjay Kumar, who is among the most senior researchers at the independent think tank which is known for its analysis of elections.
Reacting to Kumar's apology, BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya had accused him of misrepresenting projections to favour the Congress, calling the Maharashtra data a case of “confirmation bias".
Other BJP leaders also claimed that the Congress deployed his data to make allegations of electoral fraud against the party and the EC.
The Congress rejected these claims about Rahul Gandhi's recent attacks on the BJP and EC, and said Gandhi's assertions were made on data given by the poll panel itself.
The EC has also asked Gandhi for submitting his analysis and the claimed evidence under oath, but the Congress leader has said he need not do that. “I have taken the oath of the Constitution already as MP, and the data I have shared came from the EC, so it can simply check its own numbers,” he has said.
