Mumbai, Aug 20 (IANS) Two separate cases have been registered against psephologist Sanjay Kumar by the district electoral officers (DEO) of Nashik and Nagpur for allegedly misleading voters with wrong data on the Devlali and Ramtek assembly segments for the Lok Sabha and state assembly elections held in November 2024.

Sanjay Kumar had raised questions regarding voting in the Maharashtra elections.

“Sanjay Kumar from CSDS has posted misleading information about voters of 126-Devlali AC for LS-2024 and MH LA-2024; a case is registered against him. It is requested of all citizens to verify the info only from the ECI website,” said Nashik district electoral officer in his post on X.

Further, DEO Nagpur in his post on X said, “@ECISVEEP @SpokespersonECI @CEO_Maharashtra Sanjay Kumar from CSDS, has posted misleading information of voters of 59-Ramtek AC for LS-2024 and MH LA-2024, FIR is registered against him. It is requested of all citizens to verify the info only from the ECI website.”

These cases have been filed under multiple sections of the BNS, including Sections 175, 353(1)(b), 212, and 340(1)(2), for his controversial social media posts related to the Maharashtra assembly elections.

The move by Nashik and Nagpur DEOs to file cases comes a day after Sanjay Kumar, in a post on X, said, “I sincerely apologise for the tweets posted regarding Maharashtra elections. An error occurred while comparing the data of 2024 LS and 2024 AS. The data in the row was misread by our Data team. The tweet has since been removed. I had no intention of dispersing any form of misinformation.”

Sanjay Kumar had further claimed that the number of voters in the Nashik West and Hingna Assembly segments rose by 47 per cent and 43 per cent, respectively, between the Lok Sabha election last year and the Maharashtra polls earlier this year.

He also claimed that the number of voters sharply fell in Ramtek and Devlali seats by 38 per cent and 36 per cent, respectively.

After Sanjay Kumar’s apology, the BJP accused CSDS of providing erroneous data to back Congress’s allegations. However, the Congress party said that they had independently verified CSDS data before using it.

Earlier, the Maharashtra CEO in June had issued a clarification to Rahul Gandhi’s allegations of rigging and match fixing in state assembly elections held last year, saying that the gross addition of electors from Assembly Elections 2019 to Lok Sabha Elections 2024 was 1.39 crore and addition from Lok Sabha 2024 to Assembly 2024 was 48.82 lakh.

“There was a net increase of 32.25 lakh electors from the Assembly Elections 2019 to Lok Sabha Elections 2024 on account of 1.39 crore additions and 1.07 crore deletions. The total addition between the Lok Sabha Elections 2024 and to Assembly Elections 2024 was 48.82 lakh, and deletion was 8 lakh. Hence, the net addition in Electors after the Lok Sabha Elections 2024 was 40.81 lakh. More than 26 lakh of the additions were young electors in the age group of 18 to 29 years,” said the CEO.

With regard to alarming claims made by LoP regarding the addition or deletion of voters in Electoral Rolls, the CEO said, “It is clarified that Indian electoral laws do not provide for any centralised addition or deletion of electors.”

–IANS

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