The Supreme Court Today (Aug 25) stayed FIRs against Delhi-based election analyst Sanjay Kumar for posting incorrect voter data about the 2024 polls in Maharashtra. Kumar admitted his mistake, deleted the posts, and apologised publicly.
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NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court of India on Monday gave relief to Delhi’s Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) election analyst Sanjay Kumar by putting a stay on criminal proceedings against him. Kumar was booked for allegedly sharing wrong information on voter data related to the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha and Maharashtra Assembly elections.
A Bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) BR Gavai along with Justice NV Anjaria heard Kumar’s petition seeking to cancel the FIRs registered against him.
The FIRs were filed after Kumar himself admitted the mistake and quickly deleted his social media posts.
During the hearing, Kumar’s lawyer strongly defended him, saying,
“This (is a) person with impeccable integrity. 30 years of service to the nation and to the world. He’s highly respected. It was a mistake. He apologised. He deleted and apologised publicly. After that, an FIR.”
After hearing the submissions, the top court issued notice and directed,
“Issue notice. Stay on proceedings.”
The case is linked to two posts made by Sanjay Kumar on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) on August 17, where he compared voter data of some constituencies in Maharashtra connected to the 2024 elections. His posts hinted at possible discrepancies in the data.
However, the very next day on August 18, Kumar deleted both posts. On August 19, he made another post publicly apologising and clarified that there were mistakes in his earlier analysis.
According to Kumar’s plea, he realised through feedback from well-wishers that the August 17 posts contained inaccurate details. He explained that the wrong information came from a miscalculation of research inputs given to him by an associate.
Quoting directly from his petition filed before the Supreme Court, it said:
“The petitioner, immediately after becoming aware of the technical mistake, uploaded another post dated 19.08.2025 on the same platform thereby issuing a sincere apology for the previous posts and explaining how the unfortunate error occurred due to wrong calculations. The previous two posts were accordingly deleted by the Petitioner on 18.08.2025.”
Despite this immediate correction and apology, Kumar highlighted that two FIRs were still registered against him.
His plea further stated:
“Regardless of all sincere efforts made by the Petitioner to rectify and apology for his bona fide mistake, the officers reporting to the Election Commission of India proceeded to lodge two First Information Reports.”
Kumar has now approached the Supreme Court asking for quashing of these FIRs and any other possible FIRs related to the same issue. His petition has been filed through advocate Sumeer Sodhi.
POLITICAL BACKGROUND
The psephologist, who is associated with Delhi-based research body Centre of Studies for Developing Societies, had 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 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.
Congress leaders, who have accused the ruling BJP and the Election Commission of India of a vote fraud, latched on to Kumar’s post and claimed that they vindicate their charge.
But two days later, the psephologist apologised and deleted the posts.
“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,”
-he said in a post on X.
This prompted the BJP to attack the Congress. The ruling party accused CSDS of putting out unverified data to feed the Congress’s “fake narrative“.
Senior BJP leader and the party’s IT head, Amit Malviya, said the institution Leader of the Opposition, Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi relied on to make his allegations has now admitted that its figures were wrong.
“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,”
-Mr Malviya said, demanding an apology from the Congress leader.
CASE TITLE:
Sanjay Kumar vs The State of Maharashtra and others.
W.P.(Crl.) No. 330/2025
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