Psephologist Sanjay Kumar Deletes 'Maharashtra Voters Dip' Post, Issues Apology Amid Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Vote Chori’ Allegations; BJP Hits Out

New Delhi: A political storm erupted after prominent psephologist and co-director of Lokniti-CSDS, Sanjay Kumar, deleted his X post on Maharashtra voters and also issued an apology. In the post on August 17, Kumar had claimed that there was a dip in the number of voters in two constituencies during the 2024 Maharashtra assembly polls, as compared to the Lok Sabha elections, which were held just months earlier.

“I sincerely apologize for the tweets posted regarding Maharashtra elections. Error occurred while comparing data of 2024 LS and 2024 AS. The data in row was misread by our Data team. The tweet has since been removed. I had no intention of dispersing any form of misinformation,” the poll expert said in his recent X post.

BJP's Reaction:

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lashed out at Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, over his “vote chori” allegations against the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the saffron party.

BJP’s I-T department head Amit Malviya also hit out at Kumar, calling the poll expert’s analysis “confirmation bias”.

“The apology is in, and Sanjay Kumar is out. Incidentally, when was the last time this protégé of Yogendra Yadav ever got anything right? In all his projections in the run-up to every single election, the BJP is supposedly losing—and when the reverse happens, he turns up on TV justifying how the BJP won. Convenient. He must think TV audiences are fools.” Malviya said in his X post.

“In his exuberance to feed Congress’s fake narrative on Maharashtra, CSDS put out data without verification. That is not analysis—it is confirmation bias,” he added.

Kumar’s Earlier claims:

The prominent psephologist had claimed in his now-deleted posts that in the Ramtek assembly constituency, the number of voters was 4,66,203 during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, which were held between April and June last year., but there were only 2,86,931 during the Maharashtra assembly polls held in October that year. As per Kumar, there was a significant decrease of 38-45 per cent in voters,

He also made similar claims about the Devlali constituency. According to Kumar, there was a drop of 36.82 per cent in voters in the constituency from 4,56,072 to 2,88,141 between the Lok Sabha and the assembly polls.  

Targeting Gandhi, Malviya said that the Congress MP had defamed Maharashtra voters. “The very institution whose data Rahul Gandhi leaned on to defame the voters of Maharashtra has now admitted that its figures were wrong—not just on Maharashtra, but even on SIR,” Malviya stated.

Rahul Gandhi's Allegations And EC's Response:

Notably, on August 7, the Congress MP had alleged that the ECI had conspired with the BJP to steal votes. In his PPT presentation, Gandhi accused the poll body of “vote chori (theft” in Karnataka’s Mahadevapura constituency. He also cited Kumar’s Maharashtra data to support his allegations. He also claimed that votes were also stolen in Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Uttarakhand.

However, the poll body refuted all the allegations levelled by the Congress leader. Meanwhile, reports also surfaced that the Opposition is planning to bring an impeachment motion against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.

Published on: Tuesday, August 19, 2025, 05:17 PM IST