Amid SIR Row, Rahul Thanks EC Over Having Experience To Have Tea With ‘Dead People’

New Delhi, Aug 13

Even as the Congress has been targeting the Election Commission over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls in Nihar, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday took a veiled dig at the poll panel saying he has the opportunity to have tea with the dead people. 

In a post on X, Rahul Gandhi said, “There have been many interesting experiences in life, but I never got thr chance to have sip of tea with ‘dead people’.”

“For this unique experience, thank you Election Commission,” he added. 

The Congress in a statement also said that seven voters in Bihar, all very much alive, shared tea with Rahul Gandhi earlier in the day — even as the Election Commission’s SIR list them as “dead”. 

The party stated that Ramikbal Ray, Harendra Ray, Lalmuni Devi, Vachiya Devi, Lalwati Devi, Punam Kumari, and Munna Kumar all belong to Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav’s assembly constituency, Raghopur. 

“They have been removed from the electoral rolls despite having completed the requisite paperwork for the SIR,” the party claimed.  

The Commission has not openly published lists of the people who it has declared dead, migrated, etc. 

“Our teams on the ground were able to identify these people only because they managed to informally get EC’s internal in 2-3 polling booths, the party claimed. 

“These seven represent only a fraction of 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 alleged. 

“After ‘vote chori’ was exposed in Bangalore, it is clear that the Bihar SIR exercise is also compromised. When the living are struck off as dead, the death certificate is issued to democracy itself,” it added.

The Congress and the opposition parties had accused the EC over the SIR exercise saying the process is meant to remove lakhs of voters from the voter rolls ahead of the crucial assembly polls in the state. The opposition parties had also dubbed SIR as vote bandi and day light robbery of votes. 

Also read: ‘Vote Chori’: Congress To Go Through Results Of 70 LS Seats Where Party Lost By Margin Of 50k Votes