NEW DELHI: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday accused Congress leader Rahul Gandhi of using the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls to cover up his party’s electoral defeats. Questioning whether SIR was also responsible for Congress losses in local body elections in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, and elsewhere, Shah said the exercise began only after 2024, while Congress has been losing elections ever since Gandhi entered politics.
The BJP won decisively in the Gujarat local body polls, securing 38 of 44 seats in the Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation. Gandhinagar falls within Shah’s Lok Sabha constituency. The party also retained its hold on the Thara and Okha municipalities.
Earlier on Tuesday, Gandhi hosted a high tea for leaders of the Opposition INDIA bloc and representatives of student organisations, followed by a press conference. He alleged irregularities in the SIR process and accused Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of acting unilaterally. Gandhi said the fight would continue and that the aim of the protests was to strengthen democracy. Opposition parties have also demanded Kumar’s resignation.
Shah responded shortly after Gandhi’s press conference. He said the people of Gujarat and the country stood with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and that the BJP’s vote share in the Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation had risen by 10 percentage points compared with the previous election. He said Congress had not won a single election in Gandhinagar in 41 years and urged the party to reflect on its failure to win even in areas it once governed.
Shah also said Congress failed to win a single seat in recent by-elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. Rather than looking for reasons behind defeats, he said, Congress leaders should ask why people are not supporting the party.
Gathering workers from various parties and mobilising large crowds in Delhi, Shah said, would not win the country’s trust. Public opinion, he said, rests with farmers in their fields and people in villages, remote hills, forests and river banks, with whom he alleged Congress lacks real contact.
Shah said voters in states such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have rejected Congress for years and that its politics of negativity would not benefit it. He expressed confidence that the BJP and the NDA would inflict another heavy defeat on Gandhi and other Opposition leaders in the 2029 Lok Sabha elections.