Shah, Rahul trade barbs in LS; HM accuses Oppn of ‘double standards’ as LoP challenges him to debate

New Delhi: As Union Home Minister Amit Shah launched a stinging attack on the Opposition in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday over its criticism of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, the debate on electoral reforms witnessed a fiery face-off between him and the Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi.

When Gandhi challenged Amit Shah to hold a debate on his press conference about alleged irregularities in voter lists, Union Home Minister hit back, saying no one would dictate the order in which he would say things.

Attacking the Opposition during his intervention on the debate, Shah said they have been pointing out irregularities in existing voter lists and then also objecting to the SIR which, he said, was aimed at updating the rolls and ensuring only eligible voters are part of them.

“The voter lists are absolutely fine when you win, you wear new clothes and take oath. But when you fall flat, like in Bihar, you say there is a problem with the voter list... These double standards will not fly,” he said.

While interjecting during the debate, Gandhi asked Shah to reply first on why Election Commissioners had been granted immunity for any action taken while in office. Alleging that the Home minister had cherry-picked certain examples from his press conferences, Gandhi dared him to hold a debate: “Actually, let us have a debate on my press conference. Let us go. Amit Shah ji, I challenge you to have a debate on the three press conferences.”

The interruption by Gandhi did little to impact Shah as he sharpened his attack against the Congress. Taking a dig at Gandhi’s press conferences on voter lists, one of which was dubbed a “hydrogen bomb”, Shah said the Leader of the Opposition spoke about ‘vote chori’ (vote theft) when some families – a seeming reference to the Nehru-Gandhi family – were “generational vote chors”.

Shah alleged that the Opposition is raising the issue of SIR to keep “avaidh ghuspathiye (illegal immigrants)” in the voters’ list.

When the opposition MPs walked out later, Shah said no matter how many times the Opposition boycotts, the NDA will continue with its policy of detect, delete and deport ‘ghuspathiye’. The Opposition wants to normalise and formalise the ‘ghuspathiye’ and add them in electoral rolls, he said. The BJP leader cited three instances of alleged “vote chori” by Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi.

Continuing his attack on the Congress, the Home Minister said, “If someone asks a question in a presser he is dubbed as a BJP agent, if they lose a case, they accuse the judge, if they lose an election, they blame EVMs. Now when EVM blame does not hold, they brought up vote chori...still they lost Bhar. Now the reason for your defeat is your leadership and not EVM or voters’ list. “ Shah also accused the Opposition of spreading falsehoods on SIR and launched a strong defence of the exercise, asking whether democracy can be safe when the prime minister and the chief ministers are decided by ‘ghuspathiye’.

He said the Opposition “gets angry when we talk of history, but how can any country or society move forward without history”.

“The first SIR was conducted in 1952, when Jawaharlal Nehru was the prime minister and the Congress was in power. Then it happened in 1957 when Nehru was there, the third happened in 1961 and Nehru was there.

“Then it happened during Lal Bahadur Shastri’s time, then again during Indira Gandhi’s time, Rajiv Gandhi’s time, Narasimha Rao’s time, and then in 2002 during Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s time which continued till Manmohan Singh’s time,” he said.

“No party had opposed this process because it is a process of keeping elections clean and keeping democracy healthy,” Shah said.

He said the objective of the SIR of electoral rolls is to remove those who have died, add the names of those who have turned 18 and delete foreign nationals one by one. The BJP leader said the Opposition thinks that it is tarnishing the image of the government but in reality they are tarnishing the image of India’s democracy.

The new tradition is that if they lose, they defame the EC and electoral rolls which is not good for the country’s democracy. “If electoral rolls were corrupted, why did you contest elections,” Shah asked the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. He said the BJP has lost more elections than it has won, but it never questioned the Election Commission. “EVMs stopped election chori and that is why they are worried. Their method of election was not mandate but corrupt practices, and they have been fully exposed,” he said.

Tradition of electoral loss began in 2014 and the Congress blamed EVMs, which were brought by Rajiv Gandhi in 1989, he said.

The EVMs were used for the first time in 2004 and then in 2009 elections and on both occasions, the Congress won, but they started complaining only after the 2014 loss, he said.

He stressed that Parliament is the biggest panchayat for discussions and the BJP-NDA people never run away from a discussion.

“We asked for having it later for two reasons -- they (Opposition) were asking for discussion on SIR and I believe discussion on SIR cannot be held because it comes under the Election Commission,” Shah said.

“When they said we want to discuss election reforms, we agreed immediately. A debate was agreed on electoral reforms, but the majority of opposition members talked of SIR. On this SIR, one-sided falsehoods were being propagated in the last four months, and efforts were made to mislead people,” he said.

Apart from this, Shah also highlighted the issue of border fencing along the India–Bangladesh frontier in West Bengal. He said that fencing remained pending along 1,653 km of the state’s border, out of the total 2,216 km that stretches across West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and Mizoram.

Warning the Trinamool Congress, he said the Congress had been “washed out” because of its alleged appeasement of illegal immigrants and that if the TMC continued on the same path, the BJP would “soon celebrate its victory in West Bengal.”

Holding the state machinery responsible for security lapses, the Home Minister charged that infiltrators take shelter in villages with the knowledge of local administrations. “Are the local authorities not aware of this? Is the local police not aware of their stay?” he asked the House.

He went on to accuse local bodies of getting such individuals’ Aadhaar cards and ration cards issued and, finally, getting their names included in the voters’ lists. Questioning the role of local authorities, Shah asked, “Isn’t it your responsibility to verify?”

He concluded this segment of his speech with a stern warning to the TMC-led West Bengal government: such electoral victories would mean nothing if they came at the cost of national security.

The Home Minister said the Election Commission of India had told the Centre that it had not received any formal suggestions on electoral reforms from the Congress since the NDA came to power in 2014.

He further alleged that Congress had never challenged alleged electoral irregularities in courts or through constitutional mechanisms but preferred to hold press conferences. “Is holding a press conference a constitutional way to challenge electoral reform?” Shah asked.

Throughout his speech, Shah kept returning to the main argument: the government’s drive for electoral reforms is aimed squarely at strengthening democracy by guaranteeing clean, accurate electoral lists. He accused the opposition of politicising this core objective and of spreading false narratives to divert attention from the foundational aim of protecting the integrity of elections in India.

The debate in Lok Sabha continued to be heated, with the members frequently interrupting each other and raising strong counter-allegations and slogans against each other. The walkout by Congress members underlined the growing political divide on the issue of electoral reforms, which is centred around voter verification and alleged illegal immigration.