Taking tea with the ‘dead’: Rahul Gandhi thanks ECI for interesting times

Sharing a video and photographs with seven individuals reportedly declared ‘dead’ by the Election Commission of India after the first phase of the special intensive revision (SIR) of voter rolls in Bihar, Congress MP and Lok Sabha LoP Rahul Gandhi posted on 13 August, Wednesday, to express his gratitude for the "unique experience".

In his post on X, Gandhi wrote: "There have been many interesting experiences in life, but I never got the chance to have tea with 'dead people'."

"For this unique experience, thank you, Election Commission!"

Ramikbal Ray, Harendra Ray, Lalmuni Devi, Vachiya Devi, Lalwati Devi, Punam Kumari and Munna Kumar — videographed visiting the Leader of the Opposition in Delhi with their families — all belong to Raghopur constituency, the home of RJD leader and former deputy chief minister of the state Tejashwi Yadav.

Each has been removed from the electoral rolls despite having completed the requisite paperwork for the SIR.

The apprehension around 'dead people walking' from the revised electoral rolls of the state was also highlighted yesterday, 12 August, before the Supreme Court by activist Yogendra Yadav, who brought with him another set of individuals delisted from a different Bihar constituency.

A total of 65 lakh voters have been deleted by the Election Commission from the rolls last looked over in January 2025.

Four persons in all that were marked ‘dead’ were yesterday brought before the court, which is hearing a plea from Yadav and others against the SIR exercise. The National Herald was able to secure exclusive interviews with them. Below is the interview with Mintu Paswan, which can also be viewed on our YouTube channel.

The Election Commission has not openly published lists of the people who it has declared dead, migrated, etc. — and has told the Supreme Court it is not duty-bound to do so, or to explain why these persons were removed.

"Our teams on the ground were able to identify these people only because they managed to informally get EC's internal lists in 2-3 polling booths. These seven represent only a fraction of the unjustly deleted voters in 2-3 polling booths in the constituency. This is not a clerical error — it is political disenfranchisement in plain sight," the Congress said in a press statement.

Tejashwi Yadav, meanwhile, held a press conference earlier today to highlight the presence of BJP-aligned individuals — some of them even candidates — who seem to hold multiple voter IDs in different assembly constituencies of Bihar, and some who voted only recently in another state and are not listed in the Bihar electoral rolls, constituting (the RJD leader alleged) what seems to be a floating population of voters switching states as they vote in different elections.

He cited, for instance, Bhikhubhai Dalsaniya, a BJP personage from Gujarat, who last voted in that state as recently as 2024 but is now listed in Patna ahead of the 2025 assembly election.

So those are the included; as for the hapless unnumbered excluded, as the Congress press statement concludes: "When the living are struck off as dead, the death certificate is issued to democracy itself."