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Amit Shah slams INDIA bloc protest, says Congress must introspect and not blame EC
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00:00Good evening, you're watching NewsTrack with me, Maria Shaquille.
00:03From Charcha over Chai to a word of words, the SIR battle is heating up.
00:08After taking their concerns to the Supreme Court, India Block today regrouped at Rahul Gandhi's residence
00:15with civil society and student representatives joining the discussion.
00:20Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi said that the fight will continue.
00:24But today the Home Minister has hit back, accusing the Congress of using SIR to explain past electoral defeats
00:34and predicting a prachandhar for the party in 2029.
00:38The SIR exercise is emerging as the next big political flashpoint.
00:43The battle line is drawn and the battle is in the court as well.
00:49The war of words is heating up and the political stakes are rising.
00:54Before I bring in the guests, here's a report.
01:01From the streets to Rahul Gandhi's drawing room, the opposition's SIR campaign continues.
01:10Following Monday's march to the Supreme Court over the SIR exercise and CEC Gyanesh Kumar,
01:16Rahul Gandhi hosted India Block MPs, civil society representatives and student groups
01:23at his New Delhi residence for a Haiti meeting.
01:26The focus was on discussing the road ahead and deciding the next steps in their campaign.
01:34Mr. Modi, who is the main architect, Mr. Amit Shah, who is the implementer, Mr. Gyanesh Kumar and others.
02:10The opposition came down heavily on the centre for removing Jantar Mantar from the list
02:15of designated protest sites in the national capital.
02:18One method of expression of democracy was Jantar Mantar.
02:23And now the government has decided that Jantar Mantar can no longer be used to express democratic feelings.
02:32Well, we are going to challenge that idea.
02:37This meeting comes a day after the opposition submitted a petition in the Supreme Court
02:42questioning mass voter deletions under the SIR process
02:46and the functioning of the Election Commission of India.
02:49The plea, however, was not listed for hearing after the Supreme Court registry flagged 14 defects in the filing.
02:57Rahul Gandhi's allegations drew a sharp rebuttal from Home Minister Amit Shah,
03:01who accused the Congress leader of blaming the SIR exercise for his party's defeats in previous elections.
03:35Shah also predicted a pratchets.
03:38Phratchand Haar for the Congress in the 2029 Lok Sabha elections.
04:09The opposition is mounting a twin
04:12front battle against the CEC politically and legally.
04:17With SIR-related voter deletions fueling the row,
04:21the focus now shifts to its next course of action.
04:27Bury report, India Today.
04:32Joining me on the show tonight,
04:34Tunheen Sinan, National Spokesperson of the BJP.
04:36We have Salman Sos from the Congress.
04:39Salman Sos, yes, SIR is a matter of concern.
04:43Yes, the manner in which it has been implemented is a matter of concern.
04:47But shouldn't the Congress also be looking within, introspecting as to how and why did it lose states?
04:58Yes, that what went wrong in the state of Bihar?
05:02What went wrong with Mahmata Banerjee's politics and her policies in the state of Bengal?
05:09SIR, yes, but if you don't fix the nuts and bolts of the organizations, address the concerns,
05:18don't you think that you'll be blaming it on something rather than addressing the principal issue as well?
05:25Mahmata Banerjee, the principal issue that the Home Minister will not talk about,
05:28the Prime Minister will not talk about,
05:30is how they have basically destroyed this country's economy.
05:34And he will talk about the SIR, he will talk about how their opposition has failed.
05:38He won't obviously talk about how many times we've beaten them.
05:40In Chhattisgarh we beat them, we beat them in Madhya Pradesh, we beat them in Rajasthan,
05:46we beat them in Karnataka, Talingana, Kerala.
05:49So, you know, he won't talk about all those things.
05:50No, no, when did you beat them in Madhya Pradesh and…
05:53In two, I mean, in the previous, the election cycle before this one, we beat them in three states.
05:59No, not in Madhya Pradesh.
06:01Madhya Pradesh we beat them, yes.
06:03Please, we beat them in Madhya, we had a company in Madhya Pradesh.
06:06Yes, yes, yes, yes.
06:07And then in midway the government chose, yes, go ahead.
06:10So, I don't want, you know, but here's what the people of the country are asking for.
06:16Should the Prime Minister and Amit Shah not talk about how wages of ordinary workers have grown at less than
06:251% after adjusting for inflation over the last 10 years?
06:28Should they not be talking about that?
06:30Should they not be talking about the rampant inflation right now in this country?
06:34Food price inflation is about 8%.
06:36And wholesale price inflation is double-digit almost.
06:40They won't talk about that because they cannot talk about that.
06:42They will not talk about how the middle class is being taxed, income tax, GST, long-term capital gains tax,
06:50all sorts of taxes.
06:52And then price rise.
06:53And then the RBI comes in and increases, you know, the interest rates.
06:57That will basically have an impact on EMIs, your car loans.
07:01They have nothing to talk about.
07:02Do you think people are happy with these guys?
07:04If the people were happy with the BJP, then why would Prime Minister Modi's victory margin come down from 5
07:11%?
07:11But Salman, all these protests which have been happening for the last one week,
07:16Yes.
07:18is not because of all those issues that you have just highlighted.
07:22No, I will tell you why.
07:23Of course there are, Mari.
07:25You have to see the link.
07:26Why do you think people are so upset in this country?
07:28People are furious.
07:30No jobs, high inflation, no wage growth, no opportunity, the billionaires becoming mega-billionaires.
07:42That is what the underlying frustration is.
07:45Okay.
07:45And then, of course, you have an election commission.
07:48By the way, I don't know if you saw today, Ashok Lavasa, who's a former election commissioner.
07:54You should see his article, what he says about the election commission.
07:57How the election commission, this election commission, has basically destroyed its credibility.
08:02That's what a former election commissioner says.
08:03Tuheen, Tuheen, you know, for the last two weeks, we have been only asking a very specific question.
08:11All those questions which have been raised with regards to difference of opinion within the commission should be responded to
08:18in a joint press conference which will have the CEC, Mr. Gyanesh Kumar, and the two election commissioners.
08:26That is the way to address an issue which is being raised repeatedly, rather than ministers, senior ministers, coming out
08:34and, in a way, defending the SIR exercise.
08:39Well, good evening, Maria.
08:40Good evening, everybody.
08:41You know, in the first two minutes, three minutes, rather, that you gave to Salman Sos, you saw how cleverly
08:45he deflected away from SIR, which shows the reality of the Congress party.
08:49They know that they have reached a dead end.
08:51There is nothing in their claims.
08:53Now, whether the CEC addresses a press conference or he brings out a detailed press note, which is what he
08:59did, fact is that the issues have been addressed.
09:03But most importantly, the entire issue is subjudice.
09:06No, but SIR, no, no, no, it is not for the BJP to defend the SIR exercise.
09:13We are not defending, no, no, we are not defending SIR.
09:16When they say vote chori, obviously, they mean to say that we have formed an illegitimate government and we are
09:22bound to respond to that.
09:24The entire objective of this vicious campaign is to besmirch India's democracy, is to give a bad name to India,
09:32you know, across the globe.
09:33And I think we are, in that situation, bound to respond.
09:36But so far as the process of SIR is concerned, the response has come from the election commission.
09:41Whether they do a press conference or they bring out a press note, I think it's entirely their prerogated.
09:46But I'm very shocked today.
09:48If you saw Rahul Gandhi's press conference, you know, I was expecting he would condemn Prashant Bhushan for the audio
09:54that was, you know, that came out yesterday,
09:56where he's clearly saying that bloodshed has become inevitable.
09:59Instead, you have a Prashant Bhushan and Yokendra Yadav addressing that conference.
10:04Where is this Congress party headed?
10:06Even Arvind Kejewal, who's a self-proclaimed anarchist, had the audacity to, you know, throw out these two people.
10:13But instead, Rahul Gandhi's entire campaign is being hijacked by people who are loony leftists and whose entire, you know,
10:19entire...
10:19Okay, let me, let me, you know, you know, Casey Venu Kupal, senior Congress leader, has just put out a
10:26tweet
10:27in which he is saying that Mr. Sharpe should not worry about whether they would be in power for that
10:36long.
10:37Let me put out that exact tweet and quote that tweet for you.
10:42Casey Venu Kupal, senior Congress leader, saying in his tweet, and this is a response which has come in after
10:49that soundbite which was given by Home Minister,
10:52that it's heights of irony that vote chore is celebrating an election victory when the whole problem is how they
11:00are destroying our electoral system.
11:02This is what has been said.
11:05He does not understand the legal definition of vote chore.
11:08Four days ago, it's been four days now, he met the president of the country.
11:12What did the president tell him?
11:14As for Rahul Gandhi, she said, come back with proof.
11:16It's been four days now.
11:18If Rahul Gandhi had any evidence, and when I say evidence,
11:20I mean the legal definition of evidence, Rahul Gandhi should have sought a fresh meeting.
11:25Why is he, you know, why is he always running away from situations?
11:29In fact, you would recall, Mariya, we have been telling him for the last one year
11:33that he should approach the Supreme Court.
11:35He should file a petition.
11:36What took him one long year?
11:38Obviously, he is scared of the fact that he will have to provide all the so-called vote choreographies in
11:44a form of evidence.
11:44So, is this a politics of shoot in school?
11:46Salman Sors, one moment.
11:48Let Salman respond.
11:49Tawin, yes, of course.
11:51Let me just say this.
11:53We saw the home minister today.
11:55I don't know, I've seen him after a long time.
11:57He doesn't go to parliament.
11:59After September 20th, after the Delhi police brutalized protesters,
12:03he did not go to parliament.
12:04He did not have the guts to face the people of the country.
12:08And then, today, he basically comes up with a monologue.
12:15Should he not be responding to, you know, all these instances of women being groped and assaulted by police personnel?
12:23Should he not be saying to us, how were right-wing goons on Delhi Street beating up protesters in front
12:31of police that Amit Shah controls?
12:33What kind of a home minister is this guy?
12:36I mean, he has no answers for anything.
12:39Manipur is burning, he's nowhere.
12:41And he's talking about 2029?
12:43He should be more concerned about the country's internal affairs.
12:47But the point that has been made here, Salman, is that the home minister says that even in 2029, the
12:56BJP will win,
12:57and that your loss is going to be something that he has predicted for 2029.
13:02One moment.
13:03Yes, there are concerns.
13:05I'm not ruling out because it is almost like proven now that there are concerns with regards to SIR.
13:11Because all those, you know, invariably we are seeing the names also return to the electoral rolls.
13:19But the concerns with regards to something which is more integral in terms of Congress's issues, internal issues, have to
13:27be addressed as well.
13:28I wanted to say that, I don't know, you must have noticed, I'm sure you're a very fine journalist,
13:34that the home minister did not say Charles O'Pard this time.
13:37He was saying we're going to win.
13:39You saw his body language.
13:41These people know that the people of the country are sick and tired of them.
13:46They can't wait to kick them out of power.
13:48Salman, so I really appreciate your time.
13:51Let me do this interview that I did with Congress leader Shashit Harroor over India bloc's petition in the Supreme
13:57Court and the protest.
13:58Listen in to this exclusive conversation.
14:10Joining me now is senior Congress leader and Congress MP, Dr. Shashit Harroor.
14:15Dr. Harroor was on ground zero yesterday, along with all the party MPs and leaders of India bloc.
14:22Dr. Harroor, the opposition first marched towards the election commission, then we saw Jantar Mantar.
14:28Yesterday, the battle was taken straight to the Supreme Court.
14:32There has been street mobilization, a political confrontation and now a legal challenge.
14:37But how does the opposition sustain this movement beyond these demonstrations?
14:42Let me ask a more direct question.
14:45What would constitute a tangible victory, according to you?
14:49I think a tangible victory would be if we can actually help restore the voting rights of Indian citizens, which
14:55have been so cruelly snatched away by the malfeasance of the chief election commissioner.
15:00What we want to see is a number of specific things we have spelled out.
15:04They include a suspension of the current SIR process, a restoration of those who've been illegally deleted from the rolls
15:11back to the rolls, an opportunity to have the ridiculously intrusive software reviewed, because at the moment, electoral officers, the
15:23EROs in the various states who have the authority, are not even able to override the software to restore voters
15:29they know have been wrongly deleted.
15:31You saw the Indian Express investigation of the 97 cases in Goa.
15:35So you've got example after example of wrongdoing, the illegal changing of a form six and form seven.
15:41As a former election commissioner rightly said, it looks like the ECI is at sixes and sevens.
15:46I mean, you've got one problem after the other that have been pointed out.
15:50A lot of these have been put before the election commission and the bigger part before the Supreme Court in
15:55a series of election petitions.
15:57And I believe that many of these will be heard today, including the one that Rahul Gandhi filed yesterday.
16:02We also believe that in the interest of accountability, the chief election commissioner must resign.
16:08And all of these demands, I think, are going to be persisted with until justice is obtained.
16:13We believe that the integrity of the election process is fundamental to the health of Indian democracy and to the
16:19credibility of the largest democracy in the world,
16:22both nationally to voters and internationally to the rest of the world.
16:26So we cannot afford to let up on this effort.
16:29And there are multiple petitions, Dr. Tharoor, with regards to SIR.
16:34And all those battles with regards to SIR began around the time Bihar went to polls.
16:41There are several scrutiny which was done of the election commission at that time itself.
16:47The election commission has been arguing that electoral rolls must be cleaned, must be cleaned up to remove duplicate voters,
16:56those voters who have shifted and those who have died.
16:59Where do you draw the line between legitimate electoral housekeeping and potential disenfranchisement?
17:06What is the evidence that the SIR process has crossed that line?
17:10Well, look, nobody is against removing dead, absent or relocated voters.
17:15I mean, that's a common sense thing.
17:17And we have seen this done in the past.
17:19The problem is with the methods adopted by the election commission,
17:23the unseemly haste with which decisions have been made to strike voters off the rolls,
17:27the incredible slowness of the review process, the appeal process.
17:31You've seen, for example, in Bengal, you mentioned Bihar,
17:34but in Bengal we had the outrageous exclusion of 94 lakh names.
17:38And as you know, some of them were legitimately people who had died or whatever,
17:43but there were many others who filed appeals.
17:45Some 34 lakh people filed appeals against their exclusion.
17:47And 91% of those appeals heard so far, which is only a fraction of the appeals,
17:53but 91% were found to have been unjustly struck off the rolls.
17:57Now, when you've made a mistake on such a gross scale that 91% turn out,
18:02you turn out to be in the wrong,
18:04on what basis can you put the onus on the poor voter?
18:07You are telling the voter, you prove that you deserve to vote.
18:10That's not the way our government used to work.
18:12That's not the way our system used to work.
18:14If there is grounds for suspecting that somebody is casting a vote in the name of a dead person
18:19or casting a duplicate vote or whatever,
18:22you bring forward your evidence as the election commission and invalidate his vote.
18:25You don't do this first and then ask them to prove it.
18:29We've had too many examples.
18:30For example, you've had people being struck for so-called logical discrepancies.
18:35Even poor, 94-year-old Amartya Sen has been asked to explain
18:39why his mother was only 15 years older than him.
18:41Well, sorry, that's how it was in those days.
18:43Marriages were very early.
18:44Children were born when mothers were 15 or 16.
18:47You can't suddenly call that a logical discrepancy in 2026
18:50and start knocking people off the rolls.
18:52It makes no sense.
18:53We've had ambassadors who represent the country.
18:56Our foreign minister, speaking for the UN,
18:58gets a notice saying, why should he be allowed to vote?
18:59Well, he's just speaking at the UN on behalf of India.
19:02What's going on here?
19:04There is a preposterous illogicality to what the election commission has done.
19:11And you can't have a world record number of 130 million people
19:15struck off the rolls and expect to retain any credibility.
19:18What about all the elections that have taken place since 2002,
19:22which apparently is their magic yardstick, and 2026?
19:25Are we saying that Mr. Modi's elections were all invalid?
19:28Because apparently a lot of fake and dead people voted for him.
19:31What does this mean?
19:32You cannot jeopardize the credibility of the entire electoral system
19:35by saying if your grandfather wasn't on the rolls in 2002,
19:39you're a fake voter.
19:40Okay.
19:40There's something totally preposterous about the way they've gone about this exercise.
19:44So let me bring in what the BJP is saying here, Dr. Tharoor.
19:48They say that when the Congress or India bloc wins states,
19:53for example, the state of Karnataka or, you know, Kerala, even Tamil Nadu,
19:58you don't talk about exercise, SIR exercise and the voter deletion.
20:02You don't say that there is vote chori.
20:04You talk about it only when you lose elections.
20:07So you're not addressing the reasons why you're losing elections.
20:10You are looking at the election commission and trying to target him or the institution.
20:17I disagree fundamentally.
20:19We're talking about cases where people have protested the injustice.
20:22Have there been millions of appeals in Kerala,
20:24people saying they were wrongly struck off the rolls?
20:26No, because our parties are vigilant, not just the Congress party.
20:29Every party, including the communists and the BJP,
20:31are vigilant during the exercise.
20:33And if they saw any injustice being done, they would have taken it up.
20:36It so happens that in places like Bengal and Bihar,
20:39where the BJP and apparently their backers have an outsized interest,
20:44large numbers of Form 7s were filed to knock legitimate voters off the polls.
20:49Large numbers of Form 6 were changed and invalidated.
20:53Problems were created in those states where the BJP has a vested interest.
20:56I'm sorry. I don't want to make it so blunt.
20:58I, too, as an Indian, am proud of having a free and fair election system.
21:01And I will say to you, very frankly, where there were free and fair elections,
21:06no one is complaining because voters aren't complaining.
21:09Voters haven't come up and said, we were taken off the rolls unfairly.
21:12Where they have, their appeals will be heard, and they should be heard.
21:14But I think the fundamental flaw in the approach of the Election Commission
21:18is knocking people off first and then hearing appeals at a very sort of gentle pace,
21:24whereby it'll take 10 years for them to hear all the pending appeals
21:27for the decisions they've made.
21:28There'll be 10 years' worth of elections taking place where people won't be able to vote.
21:32And that's wrong. That is simply wrong.
21:34And it's a fundamental constitutional right of an Indian citizen
21:37to be able to make his or her own choices, to cast their own votes,
21:42to be able to determine their political destiny.
21:44The Election Commission has no business taking that away.
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