The Supreme Court on Monday stayed criminal proceedings against psephologist Sanjay Kumar of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) for publishing misleading information about voter data in two Maharashtra assembly segments, which he later withdrew, admitting to his mistake.
A bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Bhushan R Gavai and justice NV Anjaria said, “By an ad-interim order, there shall be stay of further proceedings,” as it issued notice to the state government on Kumar’s petition.
Senior advocate Vivek Tankha appearing for the petitioner along with advocate Sumeer Sodhi said that Kumar is an officer with impeccable integrity in his service spanning past three decades. Tankha said that the petitioner had committed a genuine mistake following which he withdrew the statement he earlier made.
The bench said, “He has withdrawn it also. Normally we would not entertain it. But we will issue a notice.”
The case was registered against Kumar on a complaint by the district electoral officers (DEO) of Nashik and Nagpur in Maharashtra for allegedly misleading voters with wrong data on the Ramtek and Devlali assembly segments for the Lok Sabha and state elections held in 2024.
Kumar, a senior analyst and professor at Delhi-based think tank CSDS had last week posted a tweet on ‘X’ that the number of voters in the two constituencies fell roughly by 36% and 38%. However, on August 19, he published a fresh tweet withdrawing the statement claiming that the error occurred due to misreading of a row by the team researching the data.
{{/usCountry}}Kumar, a senior analyst and professor at Delhi-based think tank CSDS had last week posted a tweet on ‘X’ that the number of voters in the two constituencies fell roughly by 36% and 38%. However, on August 19, he published a fresh tweet withdrawing the statement claiming that the error occurred due to misreading of a row by the team researching the data.
{{/usCountry}}“The tweet has since been removed. I had no intention of dispersing any form of misinformation,” Kumar wrote.
However, despite the tweet, the matter raised a political storm with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claiming that a narrative is being created to favour the Congress. BJP leaders also claimed that the data which CSDS has now withdrawn was used by the Congress to make allegations of electoral fraud against the Election Commission.
However, the Congress rejected these allegations claiming that the recent attack by leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi accusing the poll panel of “vote chori” was based on data provided by the poll panel itself.
In his petition, Kumar has sought a direction from the court to quash the two FIRs registered against him at Nasik and Ramtek under various provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita for giving false statement regarding elections and offences involving defamation among others. He has further urged to quash any other FIRs that may be lodged on the basis of his tweets.