New Delhi: In a witty display of political satire, Opposition MPs from the INDIA bloc on Tuesday, August 12, turned up at the Parliament complex wearing white T-shirts with the words "Minta Devi 124 Not Out" inscribed on it.
The slogan, which sounded more like a cricket scoreboard, is in fact a dig at what the opposition alleges is a proof of large-scale voter list manipulation in Bihar.
Here are some visuals from the protest:
Who Is Minta Devi and Why Is She '124 Not Out'?
According to the data from the Election Commission (ECI) cited by Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, Minta Devi is a registered first-time voter from Bihar's Daraundha Assembly seat under the Siwan Lok Sabha constituency.
Her registration lists her date of birth as July 15, 1900, making her, at least on paper, 124 years old. Gandhi used her case as an example while presenting what he claims is evidence of voter list fraud in the state following the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in Bihar.
Congress leader Pawan Khera took the mockery further on social media, by posting on X (formerly Twitter), “We proudly nominate Minta Devi for the Guinness World Record: the youngest looking oldest human in India – courtesy the several miracles of ECI.” By comparison, the current oldest known living person is 116-year-old Ethel Caterham from the UK, according to a BBC report in May this year.
Congress MP KC Venugopal further alleged that “The Election Commission has done a great service to humankind. They discovered the oldest living human, Minta Devi, whose age is listed as 124 years in the Bihar SIR. The mega voter fraud done by the EC can never be allowed. INDIA will keep protesting until it is stopped.”
Opposition Alleges 'Mega Voter Fraud'
The T-shirt protest was staged a day after several Opposition MPs were stopped from marching to the ECI's headquarters in Delhi. Congress MP Manickam Tagore told reporters, “This isn’t just a clerical error, it’s proof of mega voter fraud. INDIA will keep protesting until this is stopped.”
Gandhi, when asked about Minta Devi during the Parliament protest, cryptically said, “Picture abhi baaki hai (There is more to come).”
However, an NDTV report claims that they traced Minta Devi in Bihar, where she clarified that she had accidentally written 1900 instead of 1990 as her year of birth on the voter form. Yet, questions remain over how such discrepancies appear in the draft roll after an exercise specifically aimed at cleaning up the lists.
For now, Minta Devi’s improbable 'score' of 124 has become a political talking point, a symbol of the Opposition’s claim that India's electoral rolls are riddled with glaring errors, and perhaps, in their view, deliberate manipulation.
