Rahul Gandhi has tea with 'dead' voters from Bihar, thanks EC for experience
New Delhi, Aug 13 (PTI): Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said he had a unique experience of having tea with some "dead" voters from Bihar and thanked the Election Commission for it.
A group of seven voters from Bihar met the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha at his residence and shared their experience of how they were declared "dead" by the EC and their names removed from the electoral rolls.
"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 said in a post in Hindi on X.
He also shared a video of his meeting with the "dead" voters. In it, Gandhi is heard telling them to move around and see Delhi as the "dead" cannot even be charged tickets.
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.
The group also told Gandhi that they appeared before the Supreme Court on Wednesday to get their voting rights back. 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.
"They have been removed from the electoral rolls despite having completed the requisite paperwork for the SIR.
"The Election Commission has not openly published lists of the people whom 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 report in two to three polling booths," the Congress said.
These seven represent only a fraction of "unjustly" deleted voters in two to three polling booths in the constituency, it added.
"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," the Congress said.
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Single higher education regulator bill tabled in LS; Oppn flags ‘centralisation,' JPC likely
New Delhi: A bill to set up a 13-member body to regulate institutions of higher education was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan introduced the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, which seeks to establish an overarching higher education commission along with three councils for regulation, accreditation, and ensuring academic standards for universities and higher education institutions in India.
Meanwhile, the move drew strong opposition, with members warning that it could weaken institutional autonomy and result in excessive centralisation of higher education in India.
The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025, earlier known as the Higher Education Council of India (HECI) Bill, has been introduced in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
The proposed legislation seeks to merge three existing regulatory bodies, the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), into a single unified body called the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan.
At present, the UGC regulates non-technical higher education institutions, the AICTE oversees technical education, and the NCTE governs teacher education in India.
Under the proposed framework, the new commission will function through three separate councils responsible for regulation, accreditation, and the maintenance of academic standards across universities and higher education institutions in the country.
According to the Bill, the present challenges faced by higher educational institutions due to the multiplicity of regulators having non-harmonised regulatory approval protocols will be done away with.
The higher education commission, which will be headed by a chairperson appointed by the President of India, will cover all central universities and colleges under it, institutes of national importance functioning under the administrative purview of the Ministry of Education, including IITs, NITs, IISc, IISERs, IIMs, and IIITs.
At present, IITs and IIMs are not regulated by the University Grants Commission (UGC).
Government to refer bill to JPC; Oppn slams it
The government has expressed its willingness to refer it to a joint committee after several members of the Lok Sabha expressed strong opposition to the Bill, stating that they were not given time to study its provisions.
Responding to the opposition, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said the government intends to refer the Bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) for detailed examination.
Congress Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari warned that the Bill could result in “excessive centralisation” of higher education. He argued that the proposed law violates the constitutional division of legislative powers between the Union and the states.
According to him, the Bill goes beyond setting academic standards and intrudes into areas such as administration, affiliation, and the establishment and closure of university campuses. These matters, he said, fall under Entry 25 of the Concurrent List and Entry 32 of the State List, which cover the incorporation and regulation of state universities.
Tewari further stated that the Bill suffers from “excessive delegation of legislative power” to the proposed commission. He pointed out that crucial aspects such as accreditation frameworks, degree-granting powers, penalties, institutional autonomy, and even the supersession of institutions are left to be decided through rules, regulations, and executive directions. He argued that this amounts to a violation of established constitutional principles governing delegated legislation.
Under the Bill, the regulatory council will have the power to impose heavy penalties on higher education institutions for violating provisions of the Act or related rules. Penalties range from ₹10 lakh to ₹75 lakh for repeated violations, while establishing an institution without approval from the commission or the state government could attract a fine of up to ₹2 crore.
Concerns were also raised by members from southern states over the Hindi nomenclature of the Bill. N.K. Premachandran, an MP from the Revolutionary Socialist Party representing Kollam in Kerala, said even the name of the Bill was difficult to pronounce.
He pointed out that under Article 348 of the Constitution, the text of any Bill introduced in Parliament must be in English unless Parliament decides otherwise.
DMK MP T.M. Selvaganapathy also criticised the government for naming laws and schemes only in Hindi. He said the Constitution clearly mandates that the nomenclature of a Bill should be in English so that citizens across the country can understand its intent.
Congress MP S. Jothimani from Tamil Nadu’s Karur constituency described the Bill as another attempt to impose Hindi and termed it “an attack on federalism.”
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