Psephologist Sanjay Kumar has backed down, but the Congress is relentless in its pursuit of the Election Commission over alleged manipulation in electoral rolls.
“That’s just two seats. We weren’t depending on his data. Why should we comment?” Pawan Khera, Congress spokesperson and senior leader told The Telegraph Online when asked about the CSDS founder Sanjay Kumar deleting posts from two days ago which had pointed to data discrepancy in the electoral rolls.
In a post made on X on Sunday, Kumar had claimed, there was a decrease of more than 35 per cent voters in two Assembly seats in Maharashtra between the Lok Sabha and the Assembly polls, both held last year within months of the former.
“Some information of Maharashtra election: AC no. 59 Ramtek. Number of voters in 2024. Lok Sabha: 2,86,931. Assembly: 2,86,931. Decreased voters: 1,79,272 (38.45 per cent).
AC no. 126 Deolali. Number of voters in 2024. Lok Sabha: 4,56,702. Assembly: 2,88,141. Decreased voters: 1,67,931 (36.82 per cent).”
The post was made at 4.14 pm on Sunday.
On Tuesday morning, Kumar deleted the post with an apology: “I sincerely apologise 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.”
The Congress, which has since the results for the Maharashtra Assembly were declared, been going hammer and tongs against the poll panel for alleged fudging in voters rolls and turnout, took Kumar’s post as an independent testimony for its claims on the alleged manipulation.
On August 7, in Delhi, the leader of Opposition and Congress MP from Rae Bareilly had presented data collated from the EC to substantiate his allegations against the EC.
A war of words has since broken out between the Congress along with its allies versus the BJP and the EC.
Citing Kumar’s apology, the BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya questioned the Congress over its attack on the EC and the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Bihar.
“Where does this leave Rahul Gandhi and the Congress, which brazenly targeted the Election Commission and went so far as to brand genuine voters as fake? Shameful,” Malviya commented on X.
The Ramtek Lok Sabha seat went to the Mahavikas Aghadi candidate from the Congress Shyamkumar Barve, who had received over 48 per cent votes.
In the Assembly polls, the Shiv Sena nominee Ashish Jaiswal won the Ramtek Assembly seat, a part of the Lok Sabha constituency of the same name, with over 52 per cent of the votes.
The Shiv Sena (UBT) nominee Vishal Barbate received only 2.65 per cent of the votes, as per EC data.
The form 20 issued by the returning officer of the Lok Sabha constituency states that total 1,83,819 votes were polled in the Ramtek Assembly segment during the Lok Sabha polls, and Barwe had a lead of 4,668 votes.
Likewise, in the Lok Sabha polls, Nashik, of which Deolali is one of the Assembly segments, went to the SS (UBT), though the party finished third in the Assembly polls held in November last year.
