Rahul Gandhi criticizes the Election Commission for incorrectly removing living voters from the rolls in Bihar, humorously claiming to have “tea with the dead” as part of the ongoing Special Intensive Revision controversy.
New Delhi: Amid ongoing criticism from the Congress party regarding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls in Bihar, Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, has taken a humorous jab at the Election Commission (EC). He suggested that he has had the peculiar experience of having “tea with the dead” due to the erroneous removal of seven living voters from the electoral rolls.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Gandhi remarked, “There have been many interesting experiences in life, but I never got the chance to have a sip of tea with ‘dead people.’ For this unique experience, thank you, Election Commission.”
The Congress party issued a statement highlighting that the seven voters in question, who are all very much alive, had shared tea with Gandhi earlier in the day, despite the EC’s SIR listing them as deceased. The individuals—Ramikbal Ray, Harendra Ray, Lalmuni Devi, Vachiya Devi, Lalwati Devi, Punam Kumari, and Munna Kumar—are associated with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav’s assembly constituency of Raghopur.
The party claimed that these voters were removed from the electoral rolls even though they had completed the necessary paperwork for the SIR process. The Election Commission has not publicly disclosed the lists of individuals it has classified as deceased or migrated.
According to the Congress, their teams on the ground were able to identify these voters only through informal channels at two to three polling booths. “These seven represent only a fraction of unjustly deleted voters in those booths. This is not a clerical error—it is political disenfranchisement in plain sight,” the party asserted.
The Congress further alleged that the SIR exercise is part of a broader strategy to disenfranchise voters ahead of the crucial assembly elections in Bihar. They accused the EC of attempting to remove lakhs of voters from the rolls, dubbing the SIR process as “vote bandi” and a “daylight robbery of votes.”
In light of these developments, the Congress party has intensified its scrutiny of the Election Commission, arguing that the integrity of the electoral process is at stake. The situation has raised concerns about the potential impact on voter turnout and the overall fairness of the upcoming elections.
As the controversy unfolds, it remains to be seen how the Election Commission will respond to these allegations and whether any corrective measures will be taken to address the concerns raised by the opposition.
Source: Original article