{"id":303629,"date":"2025-08-28T09:38:32","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T04:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/?p=303629"},"modified":"2025-09-04T18:31:47","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T13:01:47","slug":"rahul-gandhi-did-not-use-csds-data-to-make-vote-chori-allegations-claims-by-media-outlets-bjp-leaders-misleading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/rahul-gandhi-did-not-use-csds-data-to-make-vote-chori-allegations-claims-by-media-outlets-bjp-leaders-misleading\/","title":{"rendered":"Rahul Gandhi did not use CSDS data to make ‘Vote Chori’ allegations; claims by media outlets, BJP leaders misleading"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since August 19, soon after psephologist Sanjay Kumar, a professor with the Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), retracted and apologised for sharing erroneous data on the 2024 Maharashtra elections, several Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders, media outlets and X users jumped to rubbish Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s claims of irregularities in electoral rolls and ‘Vote Chori’<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The development comes amid growing scepticism of the Election Commission of India (EC) after Rahul Gandhi highlighted several irregularities in poll data, claiming they pointed to a compromised poll panel and jeopardised free and fair elections.<\/p>\n

At a press conference on August 7, he flagged glaring irregularities in the voter list of Karnataka\u2019s Mahadevapura constituency in Bengaluru, raising doubts of vote theft or “Vote Chori<\/em>“.\u00a0In February<\/a> and June<\/a> this year, Gandhi had claimed there was “industrial-scale rigging” in the Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha elections too. Opposition leaders, including Gandhi, have also questioned the EC’s move to undertake an intensive revision of electoral rolls in Bihar right before the state is headed to polls, suggesting that such exercises done hurriedly could introduce more errors than weeding them out.<\/p>\n

However, after Kumar’s slip-up, the BJP and its allies have challenged and discredited Gandhi\u2019s claims of voter manipulation, arguing that Gandhi\u2019s assertions were based on ‘inaccurate’ CSDS data and hence baseless.<\/p>\n

As the story will elucidate, Kumar retracting his posts does not invalidate Rahul Gandhi’s allegations of vote manipulation. First, claims that Rahul Gandhi used ‘CSDS data’ do not hold because only the Election Commission (EC) maintains granular data on voters and electors. In fact, Kumar’s claims were also based on information from the poll body. The error was that he mistakenly compared numbers from different constituencies. Secondly, the claims made by Gandhi and those retracted by Kumar are distinctly different, though both deal with Maharashtra. While Rahul Gandhi’s claims were regarding anomalies in votes polled throughout the state, Kumar’s focus was on four specific constituencies.<\/p>\n

What Sanjay Kumar Posted and Took Down<\/h4>\n

Sharing voter data from four Maharashtra Assembly seats — Ramtek, Devlali, Nashik West and Hingna — Kumar had, on August 17, highlighted an unusual difference in voter numbers between the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections that were just five months apart.<\/p>\n

According to data shared by Kumar, in Ramtek and Devlali, there was a significant decline (over 35%) in the number of voters between the general election in June and the state polls in November. The trend in Nashik West and Hingna was the opposite. From the general elections in June, there was an over 40% rise in the number of voters in the state elections in November. But Kumar soon took down these X posts. On August 19, he posted<\/a> that errors while comparing data in different rows had resulted in him presenting incorrect information.<\/p>\n