Who is Minta Devi, Bihar’s ‘124-year-old’ first-time voter at centre of Congress’ ‘voter chori’ fight?
The Siwan district administration said the error was spotted and steps to fix it began before the story went viral.
The Siwan district administration said the error was spotted and steps to fix it began before the story went viral.
The Siwan district administration said the error was spotted and steps to fix it began before the story went viral.
Patna: “The Election Commission has made me a grandma,” laughed 35-year-old Minta Devi, as her name and photograph appeared on the shirts of opposition MPs, including Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, during a protest in the national capital on Tuesday.
According to Bihar’s draft electoral rolls, the first-time voter from Siwan district is 124 years old, making her, on paper, the oldest voter in the state where more than 7 crore people are set to cast their ballot in the upcoming polls.
“How can I be blamed for the goof-up? I filled my enumeration form online after waiting in vain for the booth-level officer to visit,” Minta, whose name quickly began trending on social media, told PTI.
The Siwan district administration said the error was spotted and steps to fix it began before the story went viral. “An application was obtained from Minta Devi on August 10 for rectifying the error, to which her attention was drawn by the BLO. It will be dealt with during the claims and objections phase of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls,” the collectorate said in a statement.
Minta says she’s simply happy to finally get the chance to vote. “Many polls have passed since I became eligible, but my name never made it to the voters’ list. If the EC has made me a grandma in the process, it is fine with me. I had put my birth year as 1990, the same as my Aadhaar card. I can’t help it if the rolls changed it to 1900,” she told reporters.
The episode comes as opposition parties attack the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) in Parliament and the Supreme Court. Social media users have also flagged two more “super senior” voters — Farzana Khatun and Asha Devi from the Pirpainti assembly segment in Bhagalpur district — who are listed as 120 years old. The Election Commission has not commented on media claims that the two are also marked as “first-time voters.”
On Monday, opposition MPs including Rahul Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge, and Sharad Pawar marched from Parliament House to the EC office in protest against the Bihar roll revision and alleged “vote chori”. Police stopped them midway and briefly detained them before releasing them.
Asked about Minta Devi, Gandhi said, “There are unlimited cases like that. Abhi picture baki hai.” Priyanka Gandhi told reporters that there were “several cases in which addresses and names of relatives are all fake.”
Earlier in the day, MPs of the INDIA bloc held another protest in Parliament House complex, many wearing white T-shirts printed with the “124-year-old voter’s” name. Leaders including Sonia Gandhi, Derek O’Brien, T R Baalu, and Supriya Sule joined, demanding the rollback of the SIR exercise.
Congress MP Manickam Tagore alleged that the EC under Rajeev Kumar and Gyanesh Kumar “has become a department of the BJP.” He said, “Minta Devi is a first-time voter and she is 124 years old. The voter list is full of such fraud.”
The SIR row has stalled Parliament for much of the Monsoon session, with little business conducted apart from discussions on Operation Sindoor. Last Thursday, Rahul Gandhi cited data from the 2024 Lok Sabha polls to allege that more than 1 lakh votes were “stolen” in the Mahadevapura assembly segment of Bangalore Central seat in Karnataka through five types of manipulation.