Lokniti-CSDS apologises for data error, BJP hits out at Rahul Gandhi’s ‘vote theft’ claim

BJP IT Department in-charge Amit Malviya on Tuesday slammed Congress MP Rahul Gandhi over his “vote theft” allegations in Maharashtra Assembly election after Lokniti-CSDS co-director Sanjay Kumar apologised for the error in his data presented in his X post.

Amit Malviya claimed that Rahul Gandhi used Lokniti-CSDS’ data, which has now admitted that an error occurred while reading the data.

Sharing an X post, the BJP leader wrote, “The very institution whose data Rahul Gandhi leaned on to defame the voters of Maharashtra has now admitted that its figures were wrong — not just on Maharashtra, but even on SIR. 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.” Calling it “Save the Infiltrator Yatra”, he asked Gandhi to stop Congress’ ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ and apologise.

“Rahul Gandhi must immediately abandon his ‘Ghuspaithiya Bachao Yatra’ in Bihar and tender an unconditional apology to the people of India for his callous and regressive politics,” he wrote.

This came after Sanjay Kumar apologised for posting wrong data regarding the Maharashtra election and admitted that the data was misread.

Lokniti-CSDS co-director wrote, “I sincerely apologise for the tweets posted regarding Maharashtra election. 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.” Meanwhile, on Monday, the Supreme Court dismissed a petition alleging discrepancies in the Maharashtra Assembly elections held in November 2024.

A bench of Justices MM Sundresh and Justice N Kotiswar Singh declined the plea filed by one Chetan Chandrakant Ahire against a Bombay High Court order of June 2025.

Ahire sought to declare the election results as void on the allegation that about 75 lakh bogus voters had cast their votes after the closing of the polls at 6 pm.

He sought a declaration that the results across all 288 Assembly constituencies in the state be set aside due to alleged violations in the polling process.