The Supreme Court on Monday took criminal action against Sanjay Kumar, a Sanspologist of the Center for the Studies of the Studies of Developing Society (CSDS), to publish misleading information about voter data in two Maharashtra assembly blocks, which he later withdrew, admitted his mistake.
A bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Bhushan R Gawai and Justice NV Anjaria said, “With an advertising order, further proceedings will have to be in further proceedings,” because it issued a notice to the state government on Kumar’s plea.
Senior Advocate Vivek Tankha, along with advocate Sumer Sodhi, asked the petitioner to appear for the petitioner that Kumar is an officer who is an officer in the last three decades with an errorless integrity in his service. Tanha said that the petitioner had made a real mistake, after which he had withdrawn the statement made earlier.
The bench said, “They have also withdrawn it. Generally we will not entertain it. But we will issue a notice.”
The case was registered against Kumar on a complaint from the District Election Officers (DEOs) of Nashik and Nagpur in Maharashtra, which was to mislead voters with false data on Ramtek and Devalli assembly segments for Lok Sabha and State Elections held in 2024.
A senior analyst and professor of Delhi -based think tank CSD posted a tweet on ‘X’ last week that the number of voters in two constituencies fell to about 36% and 38%. However, on August 19, he published a recent tweet, claiming the statement that the data on the data was error due to the wrong way by the team researching the data.
Kumar wrote, “The tweet has been removed since then. I had no intention of giving wrong information to any form.”
However, despite the tweet, the case raised a political storm with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), claiming that a story was being made in favor of the Congress. BJP leaders also claimed that the data that CSDS has now withdrawn was used by the Congress to accuse the Election Commission of election fraud.
However, the Congress dismissed the allegations, claiming that the recent attack by the leader of the leader in the Lok Sabha was based on the data provided by the pole panel, accusing the poll panel of “Vote Churi”.
In his petition, Kumar has sought a direction from the court that he sought a direction to make two FIRs registered against him in Nashik and Ramtek under various provisions of the Indian Joint Code to make a wrong statement about elections and crimes related to crimes and crimes, including defamation among others. He has further requested to extinguish any other FIR which can be recorded on the basis of his tweet.
