New Delhi/Patna: A political flashpoint over Bihar’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) escalated on Wednesday after Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi met a group of voters from Tejashwi Yadav’s Raghopur constituency in Delhi who were allegedly marked “dead” and struck off the electoral rolls, remarking that he had “tea with dead people” to underscore what he called disenfranchisement under way in the state.
RJD MP Sanjay Yadav is understood to have facilitated the voters’ travel from Raghopur (Vaishali) to Gandhi’s Delhi residence, where they narrated how their names were reportedly deleted as “deceased” despite being alive and in their native villages. Gandhi used the meeting to sharpen the opposition’s charge that the SIR process is being misused to arbitrarily exclude genuine electors, a claim the Election Commission has denied in broader litigation and public statements, insisting that due process—notice, hearing, and reasoned orders—governs inclusions and deletions.
Tejashwi Yadav, who has been leading protests and plans a statewide “voter rights” mobilization with the opposition bloc, has alleged patterns of wrongful deletions, duplicate entries, and documentation hurdles that disproportionately affect women, the poor, and migrant workers. Bringing Raghopur residents to Delhi, the RJD signaled it would continue to convert statistical claims into personal testimonies to raise the political cost of alleged errors in the revision exercise.
Gandhi’s sardonic line about sharing tea with “dead people” sought to dramatize the controversy as the opposition couples court challenges with street campaigns ahead of the assembly polls. The meeting also dovetails with planned joint programs in Bihar, where opposition leaders aim to spotlight cases they say reveal systemic flaws in field verification, data entry, and grievance redressal.
The Election Commission, for its part, maintains that expanded document options and structured appeal windows make the revision voter-friendly, while urging citizens to use prescribed forms to correct records and restore entries where warranted.
