Can democracy be safe when PM, CM decided by 'ghuspetiye': Shah slams Oppn for SIR criticism

New Delhi: Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday 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 minister are decided by "ghuspetiye (infiltrators)".

Intervening in the debate in the Lok Sabha on 'election reforms', Shah 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 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 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 Special Intensive Revision (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.

"I want to say to the House and people -- Can a country's democracy be safe when the prime minister and the chief minister are decided by 'ghuspetiye'," Shah 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.