NEW DELHI/KOLKATA/KOCHI : Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s interview with this newspaper has triggered a wave of criticism from Opposition parties, with the Congress and Trinamool Congress accusing him of deflection, and political posturing.
The BJP, meanwhile, defended Shah’s remarks and reiterated that the Home Minister elaborated the governance priorities of the government and “dismantled opposition propaganda.”
Congress leader Praveen Chakravarty, contested Shah’s statements, especially those concerning the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Bihar. “This is a classic case of a strawman argument. When someone is guilty and doesn’t want to address a direct question, they deflect.
Instead of responding to how Maharashtra witnessed more new voters in five months than five years, Shah is defending the EC,” Chakravarty said.
He accused Shah of shielding the EC to mask irregularities and questioned why the Home Minister, and not the Commission itself, was justifying the revisions: “The EC has become an extended arm of the BJP.”
Chakravarty also rejected Shah’s claims about increased fund allocation to southern states, pointing out that the Union government had significantly raised cess and surcharge collections — revenue that is not shared with states. “Cess and surcharge have gone up 600% in the last 11 years. That’s money the Centre keeps for itself. The claim that more is being given to states is false,” he said.
CPM leader and Kerala Finance Minister KN Balagopal said: “The revenue share the state used to get at the time of the 10th finance commission was 3.8%. Now it has decreased to 1.9%. Earlier, the state used to get the revenue from sales tax collection. However, after GST was implemented a large amount is going to the central pool.”
“What we have to compare is the share of revenue income each state gets out of the total revenue income of the central government. On the issue of delimitation, there should not be a setback to those states who have implemented population control successfully,” he said.
Kerala State Congress president Sunny Joseph rejected Amit Shah’s claims over increasing allocation to southern states. “It’s a wrong claim. Our MPs have many a time raised the issue of neglect towards non-BJP states like Kerala. These are baseless claims, made only for political gains.
When it comes to his remark on Indian languages, Rahul Gandhi has correctly pointed out why it’s necessary for students to learn foreign languages in a global scenario,” he said. On delimitation, he said: “These are real concerns raised by southern states. We should not play narrow politics over this.”