Rahul Gandhi Shares Tea with Bihar Voters Declared ‘Dead’ by Election Commission

By Amit Kumar

In an unusual political encounter, Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, said he recently had “tea with dead people”, a sharp swipe at the Election Commission of India (ECI) over alleged wrongful deletions from Bihar’s electoral rolls.

On Wednesday, Gandhi welcomed seven residents of Raghopur to his residence in Delhi. All of them claimed that the ECI, during its controversial ‘special intensive revision’ of the voter list, had wrongly declared them deceased and struck their names off the rolls.

According to the Congress, the seven individuals are Ramikbal Ray, Harendra Ray, Lalmuni Devi, Vachiya Devi, Lalwati Devi, Punam Kumari, and Munna Kumar, all from the same constituency.

“There have been many interesting experiences in life,” Gandhi remarked with irony, “but I never got the chance to have tea with ‘dead people’. For this unique experience, thank you Election Commission!” He made the comment in a post on X, sharing a four-minute video of his conversation with the group.

In the video, one of the voters recounted that he realised he was “dead” only after seeing a draft list excluding 65 lakh names. “But I am alive. I have come to declare I am not dead,” he told Gandhi, adding that in his panchayat alone, at least 50 others had suffered the same fate.

A Congress worker accompanying the group alleged that many had completed all the paperwork for re-verification, yet their names remained missing. “This is not a clerical error – it is political disenfranchisement in plain sight,” the party said in a statement, adding that the ECI had not published a complete list of those it marked as ‘dead’.

Gandhi reassured the group that he would oppose any attempt at “vote chori” (vote theft). He has repeatedly accused the poll body of working in tandem with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party to manipulate voter lists, allegations he made earlier in the context of Karnataka and Maharashtra, andnow claims are being repeated in Bihar