Opposition walkout over ‘ghuspathiye’ bares real agenda of SIR debate: Shah

New Delhi: Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday said the Opposition’s walkout from the Lok Sabha over his reference to “ghuspathiye (illegal immigrants)” had bared the “real agenda” behind its two-day tirade against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, claiming their only concern was to save an illegal-immigrant vote bank that SIR would delete from the lists.

Shah had already launched a stinging attack on the Opposition’s criticism of SIR and on the Congress’ record, but the benches stayed put as he accused Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi of historic instances of “vote chori”. It was only when he turned to “avaidh ghuspathiye” and their place on the voter list that Opposition MPs walked out.

“The Opposition wants to normalise and formalise the ‘ghuspathiye’ and add them in electoral rolls,” Shah alleged, intervening in a debate on election reforms. After the walkout, he said no matter how many times the Opposition boycotts proceedings, the NDA would continue with its policy of “detect, delete and deport” illegal immigrants.

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Shah used that sequence to argue that the real trigger for the campaign against SIR was the fear that “ghuspathiye”, whom he repeatedly framed as the Opposition’s vote bank, would be struck off the rolls. “Can a country’s democracy be safe when the prime minister and the chief minister are decided by ‘ghuspathiye’?” he asked.

He accused the Opposition of spreading “one-sided falsehoods” on SIR for four months and trying to mislead people, saying they were not tarnishing the image of the government but “tarnishing the image of India’s democracy”.

The Home Minister strongly defended SIR as a routine, long-standing exercise to clean the voter list. He said the objective was to remove the names of those who had died, add new voters who had turned 18 and delete foreign nationals “one by one”.

He also stressed that SIR was neither new nor partisan, and listed its history under successive governments. “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,” Shah said. “No party had opposed this process because it is a process of keeping elections clean and keeping democracy healthy.”

At the political level, Shah turned the debate into an attack on the Congress’ leadership and what he called its habit of blaming institutions for electoral setbacks.

He cited three examples of alleged “vote chori” involving top Congress leaders. “Post Independence, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was backed by 28 persons while Jawaharlal Nehru by two persons and yet Nehru became the prime minister, this was vote chori,” he said.

The second instance, he argued, was when Indira Gandhi “granted herself immunity” after a court set aside her election. The third, he said, was now before civil courts over “how Sonia Gandhi became a voter before becoming citizen of India”.

Shah said the Congress refuses to introspect on its defeats and instead targets everyone else. “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,” he said.

“Now the reason for your defeat is your leadership and not EVM or voters’ list,” he added. “They think no one holds them accountable. Bhagwan kare, I am proved wrong and one day Congress workers seek their accountability.”

On EVMs, Shah said electronic voting machines had stopped “election chori”, which was why, according to him, the Opposition was uncomfortable with them. “Their method of election was not mandate but corrupt practices, and they have been fully exposed,” he said.

He pointed out that EVMs were brought in during Rajiv Gandhi’s time in 1989 and used in the 2004 and 2009 Lok Sabha elections. “On both occasions, the Congress won, but they started complaining only after the 2014 loss,” he said.

Shah also rejected the Opposition’s charge that the government was running away from a discussion. He said Parliament was the “biggest panchayat” for debate and claimed that the BJP-NDA “never run away from a discussion”.

He explained the government’s initial reluctance to discuss SIR separately by saying it fell under the Election Commission’s domain. “They were asking for discussion on SIR and I believe discussion on SIR cannot be held because it comes under the Election Commission,” he 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 added.

By the end of his speech, Shah had used the Opposition’s walkout timing to sharpen his political message: they had listened as he revisited Congress-era “vote chori”, but chose to leave when he shifted focus to “ghuspathiye” and SIR, which he portrayed as a direct threat to what he called their illegal-immigrant vote bank.