New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi took a sharp dig at the Election Commission on Wednesday by sharing a video of himself drinking tea with people who had been wrongly declared dead in the electoral rolls.

A group of seven voters from Bihar met Gandhi at his residence. Posting the video on X, Gandhi wrote, “I have had many interesting experiences in life, but never had the chance to drink tea with 'dead people'. Thank you Election Commission for this unique experience!”

 

In the video, some of the voters told Gandhi that they were marked as “dead” by the Election Commission during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. They were among the 65 lakh voters whose names were reportedly removed from Bihar's rolls ahead of the upcoming polls.

The group also informed Gandhi that they had appeared before the Supreme Court earlier on Wednesday to seek restoration of their voting rights. The apex court is currently hearing petitions against the SIR process in Bihar.

Gandhi claimed that the Election Commission had failed to publicly disclose the list of those it marked as dead or migrated.

“They have been removed from the electoral rolls despite completing all the required paperwork for the SIR,” Gandhi said.

“Our teams were only able to identify these voters after informally obtaining internal EC reports from two to three polling booths.”

According to Congress, these seven individuals represent just a fraction of the voters who were “unjustly deleted” from the rolls in a small segment of 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. When the living are struck off as dead, the death certificate is issued to democracy itself," it added.

PTI inputs