The Indian Council of Social Science Research, a government body, on Tuesday said that it will issue a show-cause notice to the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies over an erroneous claim made by the research institute about the voter numbers in Maharashtra.

The ICSSR, which reports to the Union education ministry, oversees research in social and human sciences.

The CSDS, a research institute for social sciences and humanities, is a recipient of ICSSR funding.

Sanjay Kumar, the co-director of the CSDS-affiliated Lokniti programme, had claimed on Sunday that two Assembly constituencies in Maharashtra – Ramtek and Deolali – had witnessed a significant drop in the number of voters between the 2024 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.

The general election took place in April and May 2024 and the state polls in November 2024.

In a social media post, which was later removed, Kumar claimed that there had been a 38.4% drop in Ramtek and a 36.8% drop in Deolali. The post included specific figures, citing a decrease of around 1.7 lakh voters in each constituency.

In Ramtek, Congress candidate Shyamkumar Barve won the Lok Sabha seat with more than 48% of the votes. Six months later, the Shiv Sena’s Ashish Jaiswal won the Ramtek Assembly segment with more than 52%.

In Deolali, a segment of the Nashik Lok Sabha constituency, the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) won in the general election but finished third in the Assembly polls.

But in two other assemblies, Nashik West and Hingna, the electorate increased by more than 40%.

On Tuesday, Kumar deleted the post, attributing the error to a data misreading by his team. He apologised, saying that he had “no intention of dispersing any form of misinformation”.

The ICSSR accused the CSDS of manipulating data with the intent to undermine the credibility of the Election Commission. It stated that an individual in a responsible position at the CSDS had made public statements that were later retracted due to flawed data analysis.

It also alleged that CSDS had published media stories based on “biased interpretations” of the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls in Bihar.

The council called the actions a serious breach of grant-in-aid rules.

The controversy escalated into a political row amid allegations by Opposition parties about electoral fraud in the country.

On Tuesday, Bharatiya Janata Party Spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia accused Congress leaders of using Kumar’s erroneous data to spread misinformation about the electoral process.

He said that Kumar’s tweet was online for 40 hours and was used as propaganda by Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Pawan Khera.

“They call themselves a survey agency but are puppets in the hands of leaders like Rahul Gandhi,” The Indian Express quoted Bhatia as saying. “They [Congress] want an agency to publicise fake data. This is a factory, a machine of dishing out lies.”

The BJP’s publicity chief Amit Malviya criticised what he described as the Congress’s brazen targeting of the Election Commission.

Malviya urged Gandhi to immediately abandon his Voter Adhikar Yatra, a voter rights march in Bihar and “tender an unconditional apology to the people of India for his callous and regressive politics”.

However, the Congress defended its criticism of the Election Commission.

“That’s just two seats,” party’s publicity chief Khera told The Telegraph. “We weren’t depending on his data. Why should we comment?”

The Congress and its allies have repeatedly alleged manipulation in the electoral processes.

On August 7, Gandhi said that his party had spent six months examining the electoral rolls in Mahadevapura Assembly segment of the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency and found discrepancies in more than one lakh names.

The Opposition leader claimed that this was evidence of the poll panel having colluded with the Bharatiya Janata Party in “destroying the election system”.

The Election Commission had dismissed Gandhi’s allegations as “false and misleading”.

📰 Crime Today News is proudly sponsored by DRYFRUIT & CO – A Brand by eFabby Global LLC

Design & Developed by Yes Mom Hosting