Summary:
VARANASI: If Prime Minister Narendra Modi decides to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections again from his parliamentary constituency Varanasi, apart from the opposition he will also have to face challenge from a ‘living dead’. Ig Nobel is a parody of the Nobel Prize awarded to celebrate ten unusual achievements.Bihari now claims that he has devoted himself to the cause of living dead and has fielded many candidates in past elections.“Though the nomination papers of the living dead are rejected every time, we continue to take part in the electoral process just to raise the issue of such people,” he said. He also contested from Amethi in 1989 against Rajiv Gandhi and Rajmohan Gandhi and since then he has contested six more elections — from assembly to local bodies — till he was finally declared alive on June 30, 1994.After being declared alive in 1994, he filed a Rs 25 crore compensation suit against UP government for being declared dead for 17 years. This is the best way for a ‘living dead’ to show that he is alive,” he said.“It is unfortunate that the living dead, whose names were struck from all records after they were declared dead in their village register, have to run from pillar to post to get their names re-registered in records,” he said.“Although after an Allahabad high court order in 2000, thousands of such people were declared alive in government records, they are yet to get possession of their properties. His work got him the Ig Nobel from Harvard in 2003..