ICSSR to issue notice to CSDS amid 'vote chori' row

New Delhi: The Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) will issue a show-cause notice to the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) over violation of its grant-in-aid rules by releasing "manipulated" election data, according to officials.

The council said it takes serious cognisance of the alleged data manipulation by the CSDS and its attempt to create a narrative to undermine the sanctity of the Election Commission of India (ECI).

The decision comes in the wake of recent social media posts by the CSDS that have sparked a controversy.

Sanjay Kumar, a psephologist and a professor with the think-tank, shared voter data of two assembly seats in Maharashtra relating to last year's state elections on X on Sunday. However, he deleted it on Tuesday and in another post, apologised for posting "erroneous data" on the microblogging platform.

Terming it as a gross violation of the Grant-in-Aid rules of the ICSSR, the council said that it would issue a show-cause notice to the institute.

While the original post was deleted, Kumar had taken to X to post an apology, saying, " I sincerely apologise for the tweets posted regarding Maharashtra elections. Error occurred while comparing the 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".