Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday said the Opposition’s dramatic walkout from the Lok Sabha over his reference to “ghuspathiye” (illegal immigrants) had exposed the “real agenda” behind its two-day attack on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. He alleged that the Opposition was trying to protect an illegal-immigrant vote bank that SIR would remove from voter lists.
Shah’s remarks came during a debate on election reforms. Although the Opposition remained seated as he accused Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi of historic instances of “vote chori,” they walked out the moment he turned to illegal immigrants being included in voter rolls.
“The Opposition wants to normalise and formalise the ‘ghuspathiye’ and add them to electoral rolls,” Shah said. After the walkout, he reiterated that despite boycotts, the NDA would continue its policy to “detect, delete and deport” illegal immigrants. “Can a democracy be safe if prime ministers and chief ministers are decided by ‘ghuspathiye’?” he asked.
Rejecting allegations that SIR was partisan, Shah said it was a long-standing, routine procedure used by successive governments to remove deceased voters, add new 18-year-olds and delete foreign nationals “one by one.” He listed multiple rounds of SIR conducted under Nehru, Shastri, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh.
He accused the Opposition of propagating “one-sided falsehoods” for months, not to protect democracy but “to tarnish India’s image” and shield a vote base they feared losing.
At the political level, Shah escalated his attack on the Congress leadership, citing three examples of alleged “vote chori.” He referred to Nehru’s elevation as PM despite lower support among Congress leaders post-Independence, Indira Gandhi granting herself immunity after her election was set aside, and the case questioning Sonia Gandhi’s voter registration before acquiring citizenship.
Shah said the Congress blames everyone except its leadership for electoral defeats. “If someone asks them a question, he’s a BJP agent. If they lose a case, they blame the judge. If they lose an election, they blame EVMs,” he said, adding that electronic voting machines had ended “election chori,” which is why the Opposition now targets them.
He dismissed claims that the government resisted discussions on SIR, saying it falls under the Election Commission’s domain. Once the Opposition broadened the demand to “electoral reforms,” the government agreed immediately, he said, but Opposition MPs used the debate to reignite the SIR controversy.
By the end of his speech, Shah sharpened his political charge: the timing of the walkout proved, he claimed, that the Opposition’s core worry was not electoral reform but the deletion of illegal immigrants from voter rolls — a process they feared would erode what he called their “vote bank.”
