Rahul Gandhi and Congress under fire from BJP as Maha poll data backfires

New Delhi, Aug 19 (IANS) Amidst the heated debate over alleged discrepancies in the voters' list in Maharashtra, six months period from the Lok Sabha polls 2024 to the Assembly elections 2024, the Congress party came under fresh wave of attacks after the ‘baseless findings' by a leading survey agency, CSDS were withdrawn by the latter.

Rahul Gandhi, along with other Congress leaders, leaned on this Maharashtra voters list to escalate an attack on the BJP as well as the Election Commission, accusing both of acting in collusion and committing vote fraud.

BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia, addressing a press conference, turned the tables on the Congress party and accused it of running a trade of lies.

He hit out at both the psephologist Sanjay Kumar as well as Rahul Gandhi, asking as to who will take the blame for such disparaging depiction of the polling data and also creating an environment of lies.

Sanjay Kumar, the CSDS director, on Sunday, posted figures of the voters' list in Maharashtra, claiming a sharp difference in numbers in a span of six months. He posted details of two sets of voters in four constituencies – with two showing steep drops while the other two showed dramatic spikes.

This was lapped up by the Congress party, which used it to claim vote fraud and vote tampering by the Election Commission, at the behest of the BJP.

Psephologist withdrew the data today, admitting it was fictitious and put the onus on his team for misreading the data. He received strong backlash on social media, while the Congress party, which found itself in the soup, came under fire from the BJP.

Gaurabh Bhatia, stepping up the attack, asked, “Will Rahul Gandhi apologise before the poll panel? Will if apologise for disrespecting the people’s mandate for so long?”

"Sanjay Kumar claimed on 17th August 2025 that Ramtek Assembly constituency registered a sharp drop in the number of votes by about 38.45 per cent, while in Devlali, it saw a drop by 36.82 per cent in votes. This happened because of the large number of deaths," he said, quoting the CSDS director.

BJP leader also cited contrasting figures cited by the Leader of Opposition and asked him to come clean.

“On 3rd February 2025, Rahul said 70 lakh votes were increased in six months, while on 9th July 2025, he said that 1 crore votes were added in the Maharashtra Assembly elections. What does he want to say? Can he convey clearly?” Bhatia asked.

He also cited an example of a rejected petition, where the Opposition parties claimed that 76 lakh bogus voters cast their ballot in Maharashtra after 5 PM. He said that his petition was rejected on the grounds of no tangible evidence.

Sanjay Kumar deleted both his tweets after they went viral and later issued a clarification stating that the mistake happened because of the misreading of data.

Earlier in the day, Amit Malviya also targeted Rahul and him, claiming that they wanted to brand genuine voters as fake.

--IANS

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