Opinion | Fist Of Feverish Fury: How Amit Shah Braved Illness To Smackdown Rahul Gandhi's 'Vote Theft' Lies |
Union Home Minister Amit Shah, despite battling high fever, brilliantly dismantled Rahul Gandhi’s fake narratives in the Lok Sabha on December 10 during the Winter Session of Parliament, delivering a powerful 90-minute speech to defend the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
Shah stood firm, countering Gandhi’s allegations of “vote chori" (vote theft) with facts, historical references and sharp logic. What unfolded was a masterclass in political oratory, as Shah systematically exposed the contradictions in the duplicitous Gandhi scion’s vague claims on electoral malpractice, dynasty politics, Congress’s electoral decline and the Opposition’s hypocrisy—including that of Congress ally, DMK. The debate stemmed from Gandhi’s repeated accusations that the BJP-led government was systematically deleting voters from lists, particularly minorities, through the SIR—a process actually aimed at cleaning electoral rolls. Gandhi had dramatically labeled these claims his “hydrogen bomb" in press conferences. Shah, however, resolutely turned the tables, showing how the Opposition’s narrative was built on selective outrage and historical amnesia.
Braving a 102-degree fever and on medication, Shah exemplified iron resolve in countering every spurious claim of the Opposition and exposing their double standards. This, even as Gandhi’s post-speech insinuations of Shah’s “trembling hands" reeked of bad taste. But Gandhi’s duplicity and distasteful comments are now a part of his DNA and daily lexicon, showing why he is unfit to lead or govern.
Shah, on his part, demolished Gandhi’s core charge that SIR enabled “vote theft" on a massive scale, point by point. First, Shah explained SIR as a routine Constitutional process under the Election Commission’s mandate (Articles 326 and 327) to ensure only eligible Indian citizens get the right to vote. He listed past SIR exercises without any protest—1952, 1957, 1961 under Jawahar Lal Nehru;1965, under Lal Bahadur Shastri; 1983-84 under Indira Gandhi;1987-89 under Rajiv Gandhi;1993-95 under PV Narasimha Rao; 2002-2004 under Atal Bihari Vajpayee and thereafter under Manmohan Singh. “Why no objections then?" Shah asked. “Only now, when it affects infiltrators, do you cry foul?"
On Gandhi’s Haryana-related “atomic bomb"—501 votes from one house—Shah superbly revealed it as an ancestral one-acre plot with........