• By Aditya Jha
  • Tue, 19 Aug 2025 08:06 PM (IST)
  • Source:JND

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday slammed the Congress over "poll rigging" claims in Maharashtra after psephologist Sanjay Kumar of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) apologised and deleted the post supporting Congress claims. While reacting to Kumar's apology, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis labelled Congress leader Rahul Gandhi a "serial liar", further seeking an apology for "spreading fake information". Earlier on Sunday, the Congress, citing CSDS numbers, alleged that thousands of voters were added in certain constituencies between the Lok Sabha and state assembly elections.

Devendra Fadnavis stated that the allegations of Congress were based on the data of CSDS, adding that Gandhi should apologise as CSDS has deleted the post and apologised for the mistake. "This is a fact that data was given by CSDS, and based on that data, Rahul Gandhi had made allegations on the Election Commission, and also he had accused us of our legitimately elected government. Today, CSDS has tweeted on X and has accepted that their data was wrong and they have apologised for their mistake. They have retracted all of their earlier data," Fadnavis was quoted as saying by ANI.

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"Now the question remains whether Rahul Gandhi's allegations, based on the same data, were huge. Now will Rahul Gandhi also apologise? I do not expect this, as Rahul Gandhi is a serial liar. That is why he will speak lies daily. Now he will again rely on the same data. I don’t have a doubt about this, but there is one thing that is very clear that truth has come before the public," he added.

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In a post on X (formerly Twitter), CSDS chief Sanjay Kumar stated that the data was "miread" by his team, further apologising for the mistake. "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," Kumar stated in his post.