Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], August 19 : Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday slammed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi over his allegations about discrepancies in the 2024 state assembly elections and said that the data on which the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha based his claims, has been found to be "wrong".
Terming Rahul Gandhi a "serial liar", Fadnavis said he should apologise over his allegations and that "truth has come before the public".
"This is a fact that data was given by CSDS, and based on that data, Rahul Gandhi had made allegations on the Election Commission, and also he had accused us of our legitimately elected government. Today, CSDS has tweeted on X and has accepted that their data was wrong and they have apologised for their mistake. They have retracted all of their earlier data," Fadnavis told reporters.
"Now the question remains whether Rahul Gandhi's allegations, based on the same data, were huge. Now will Rahul Gandhi also apologise? I do not expect this, as Rahul Gandhi is a serial liar. That is why he will speak lies daily. Now he will again rely on the same data. I don't have a doubt about this, but there is one thing that is very clear that truth has come before the public," he added.
Psephologist Sanjay Kumar, who is the co-director of Lokniti-CSDS (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies), apologised over a post concerning data of Maharashtra elections.
"I sincerely apologise for the tweets posted regarding Maharashtra elections. Error occurred while comparing data of 2024 LS and 2024 AS (assembly segments). 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," he said in a post on X.
Sanjay Kumar told ANI that he rechecked the data after receiving information that the information in his post was wrong.
"Actually, we (mistakenly) compared assembly constituency number 125 (Nashik West) data with 124 and 50 (Hingna) with 49, which is one row back; that's why the information we got is wrong," Kumar said.
"The data provided by EC regarding Maharashtra state assembly polls shows that in six months, slightly more than 40 lakh voters have been added to the voters ' list," he added.
Maharashtra assembly polls were held last year.