India's opposition leader hosts 'dead' voters as PM Modi faces rigging claims

Ahead of upcoming state elections, 6.5 million voters have gone 'missing' from the electoral database

- Arpan Rai

At a sprawling bungalow in the heart of the Indian capital, several “dead” voters gather around a table to drink tea with the country's opposition leader Rahul Gandhi.

“I heard you are not alive any more,” Gandhi asks Ramikbal Ray, a resident from the eastern state of Bihar. Ramikbal confirms with a wry smile that he has been “declared dead despite being alive.”

The 66-year-old says his name was not included in the draft electoral rolls published by the Election Commission of India (ECI), the federal poll body in charge of conducting elections in the world’s largest democracy.

Gandhi, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that controls the main opposition Congress party, has accused the ECI of helping prime minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) win elections across the country by manipulating the voters’ rolls. The BJP, which performed below expectations in the national elections in 2024 and had to rely on allies to form a government, went on to win several state polls with relative ease.

The BJP and the ECI have both denied the rigging charges.

Ramikbal is among the 6.5 million Indian voters whose names have been excluded from the draft electoral rolls by the ECI. These voters were either assumed to be absentees, dead, or have moved ahead of a crucial vote in Bihar, India’s third most populous state.

At least seven of them were invited by Gandhi to his bungalow in Delhi where a table was laid out to serve tea to the “dead” Indian voters. According to the opposition, most of the eliminated voters were from Raghopur village - a voting constituency of one of Modi’s key rivals Tejashwi Yadav from the regional Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) party. “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 quips.