Image Source: Agencies

Aug 14, 2025: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi thanked the Election Commission (EC) on Wednesday for the unique opportunity to have tea with some "dead" Bihar voters. Seven Bihar voters met with the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha at his residence to discuss how the Election Commission removed their names from the electoral rolls and declared them "dead." "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!" Gandhi stated in a Hindi post on X. He also shared a video of his meeting with the "dead" voters. In it, Gandhi can be heard telling them to move around and think of Delhi as "dead," where no tickets can be charged. In the video, some of them told Gandhi that they came to know that they were "declared dead" by the EC during the special intensive revision (SIR), and were among the 65 lakh voters whose names have been removed from the electoral rolls of poll-bound Bihar.
In addition, the group informed Gandhi that they would be appearing before the Supreme Court on Wednesday to regain their right to vote. The Apex Court is hearing petitions against the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Bihar.
In a statement, the party later said that seven voters from Bihar, all very much alive, shared tea with Rahul Gandhi today, even as the Election Commission's SIR list had them as "dead".
Ramikbal Ray, Harendra Ray, Lalmuni Devi, Vachiya Devi, Lalwati Devi, Punam Kumari, and Munna Kumar all belong to Tejashwi Yadav's constituency, Raghopur.
Despite completing the required paperwork for the SIR, they have been removed from the electoral rolls. Lists of those whom the Election Commission has declared dead, migrated, or otherwise moved have not been made public. Our teams on the ground were able to identify these people only because they managed to informally get EC's internal report in two to three polling booths," the Congress said.
It also said that these seven people only make up a small portion of the "unjustly" deleted voters in two to three polling places in the constituency. "This is not a clerical error — it is political disenfranchisement in plain sight. After 'Vote Chori' was exposed in Bengaluru, it is clear that the Bihar SIR exercise is also compromised. The Congress stated, "The death certificate is issued to democracy itself when the living are struck off as dead."