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New Delhi: A heated exchange erupted in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday after Union Home Minister Amit Shah confronted Leader of the Opposition （LoP） Rahul Gandhi’s objections during a debate on electoral reforms, firmly asserting that “Parliament will not run on your directions” when the LoP asked questions on the electotal reforms and challenged the Home Minister to have a debate on his three press-conferences. When LoP Rahul Gandhi pressed the Home Minister to “first answer my yesterday’s question,” it prompted the Home Minister to underline his 30 years of experience in assemblies and Parliament and insist that he （LoP Rahul Gandhi） “cannot dictate his speaking order”. Taking on the Congress over its criticism of the Special Intensive Revision （SIR） of electoral rolls, Shah launched a calibrated counterattack. He accused the Opposition of attempting to create a “fake narrative” on electoral reforms and dismissed LoP Rahul Gandhi’s “vote chori” allegations as politically motivated. He argued that the SIR, being carried out by the Election Commission （EC）, was a constitutional and long-standing exercise designed to refine voter rolls by deleting names of the deceased and foreign nationals. “Should illegal immigrants participate in elections?” he asked. The Home Minister repeatedly invoked electoral history to counter Opposition claims that the SIR was politically motivated. He noted that detailed revisions were carried out multiple times between 1952 and 2004, almost entirely under Congress governments. “From Jawaharlal Nehru to Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Narasimha Rao, and Manmohan Singh – no one ever opposed in-depth revisions. Why the outrage now?” he asked. “History makes some people uncomfortable, but without history, no process or society can move forward,” he added. He further said that for four months, “one-sided lies” were spread to mislead citizens about the SIR. He accused Opposition parties of being “worried because the people don’t vote for them” and claimed that the clean-up would remove “illegal immigrants who back them.” IANS |
