Supreme Court stays case against CSDS' Sanjay Kumar for tweeting wrong Maharashtra voter data

The Supreme Court on Monday stayed criminal proceedings initiated against election analyst Sanjay Kumar of Delhi's Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) booked for sharing misleading information about voter data in connection with the 2024 Lok Sabha and Legislative Assembly elections in Maharashtra.

A Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) BR Gavai and Justice NV Anjaria granted interim relief to Kumar on a plea filed by him to quash the first information reports (FIR) registered against him in the matter.

The FIRs were lodged after he admitted his error and deleted the posts on social media.

"This (is a) person with impeccable integrity. 30 years of service to the nation and to the world. He’s highly respected. It was a mistake. He apologised. He deleted and apologised publicly. After that, an FIR," submitted Kumar's counsel today before the top court.

"Issue notice. Stay on proceedings," the Court ordered.

The case concerns two X posts made by Kumar on August 17 comparing voter data in certain constituencies of Maharashtra in connection with the 2024 Lok Sabha and Maharashtra legislative assembly elections. The posts reportedly referred to certain discrepancies.

Kumar deleted the posts on August 18. On August 19, he also posted an apology stating that there were errors in the August 17 posts. His plea said that he was informed by well-wishers that the information shared on August 17 was inaccurate, prompting him to take down his posts.

He added that the August 17 posts were based on research handed over by an associate and a misreading of certain data. He apologised for the error and said he had no intention of spreading misinformation.

"The petitioner, immediately after becoming aware of the technical mistake, uploaded another post dated 19.08.2025on the same platform thereby issuing a sincere apology for the previous posts and explaining how the unfortunate error occurred due to wrong calculations. The previous two posts were accordingly deleted by the Petitioner on 18.08.2025," the plea by Kumar in Supreme Court said.

Despite this, two FIRs have been registered against him by the Nagpur Police and the Nasik Police, Kumar added.

"Regardless of all sincere efforts made by the Petitioner to rectify and apology for his bona fide mistake, the officers reporting to the Election Commission of India proceeded to lodge two First Information Reports," his plea said.

He has sought the quashing of these FIRs as well as any other similar FIR that may be lodged against him.

The plea was filed through advocate Sumeer Sodhi.