Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday met three Bihar residents who had been officially declared “deceased” by the Election Commission (EC) and removed from the electoral rolls, but were produced alive before the Supreme Court a day earlier.
In a video post on X, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said, “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.”
The meeting came amid the Congress’ allegations that the EC’s move to strike off names as part of its special intensive revision (SIR) in Bihar was a conspiracy to disenfranchise the poor, backward communities and minorities.
The Congress on X alleged that it was a “clear conspiracy” to deny voting rights to the poor, backward communities and minorities.
The three voters — Vanchiya Devi, wife of Pyare Ray, aged 68, from Vaishali district; Mintu Paswan, son of Uday Paswan, aged 41, from Arah district; and Harendra Ray, son of Nashib Ray, aged 48, from Vaishali district — had appeared in the Supreme Court on Tuesday during a hearing on the voter roll revision exercise.
Political activist Yogendra Yadav, one of the petitioners in the case, presented them before the bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi to illustrate what he called the “largest exercise of disenfranchisement in the history of the world.”
“Sixty-five lakh names deleted. Never in the history of India it has ever happened,” Yadav told the court. “The figure [of excluded voters] is bound to cross one crore. This is not an issue of revision. Please see them. They are declared as dead. They don’t appear. But they are alive. See them,” said Yadav on Tuesday.
Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, reacting to the appearance of the “dead” voters, said in court, “What is this drama?”
The apex court had earlier sought the EC’s response to a plea seeking disclosure of the details of the 65 lakh voters whose names were deleted from Bihar’s draft electoral roll after the SIR.
Yadav argued that the exclusion process had already begun in Bihar and warned that a similar outcome would occur anywhere the SIR was implemented.
“Vast exclusion has already begun. Exclusion is much more than 65 lakhs. This is not a failure of implementation of SIR but because of the fact that wherever you implement SIR the result will be the same. The presumption that Bihar’s voter list was inflated and needed correction was wrong,” he said.
