NEW DELHI: Supreme Court on Monday stayed the proceedings in the complaints registered against psephologist Sanjay Kumar over his tweet pointing out discrepancies in the Maharashtra assembly elections.A bench of Chief Justice BR Gavai and Justice NV Anjaria passed the interim order while issuing notice on the writ petition filed by Kumar seeking the quashing of the FIRs.This comes days after Maharashtra Police registered FIR against Sanjay Kumar for spreading “false information” and election-related violations in Maharashtra’s Nagpur.Earlier, the psephologist apologised for his post on the Maharashtra elections, which claimed a significant dip in the number of voters in two assembly constituencies compared to the Lok Sabha election held just months earlier. “I sincerely apologize for the tweets posted regarding Maharashtra elections. 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,” the Lokniti-CSDS co-director wrote on X.In his now-deleted post on Maharashtra elections, Sanjay Kumar had claimed that in the assembly constituency 59 (Ramtek), the number of voters in 2024 stood at 4,66,203 in the Lok Sabha polls and 2,86,931 in the assembly polls, claiming “-38.45% decrease in voters”. In his second claim, Kumar had said that in the assembly constituency (Devlali), the number of voters in the Lok Sabha was 4,56,072, and during the assembly elections it came down to 2,88,141, claiming “a 36.82% decrease”.
