NEW DELHI: When the Opposition led by Congress went on a protest march from Parliament to the Election Commission of India (ECI), they were detained midway and taken to a nearby police station.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accused the Congress and its allies of the INDIA Bloc of making way for infiltrators to enter the voters’ list to serve their political interests.
Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, at a BJP headquarters-based media briefing, said, “The Congress and its leader Rahul Gandhi have today become synonymous with ideological directionlessness and deep confusion. Their only principle is that if they win elections, everything is fine, but if they lose, the system is full of flaws.”
Pradhan accused the Congress and its allied parties of being solely engaged in vote-bank politics. “The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) issue is merely a facade; the real intention is to strengthen the Congress’s vote-bank politics by adding the names of Bangladeshi infiltrators to the electoral roll.”
He also alleged that Rahul Gandhi wants to hand over the rights of the country to foreigners; this is his vote-bank appeasement politics as part of his party’s hidden agenda.
Launching a fresh broadside against Congress, Pradhan further alleged that Rahul Gandhi and the Congress Party are trying to spread anarchy in the country by making baseless allegations against an impartial institution like the Election Commission.
"By turning a regular process like the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll into a political weapon, these people are engaging in vote-bank politics in favour of infiltrators. The truth is that he (Rahul Gandhi) is hurt by the way power went out of his family,” Pradhan remarked.
Describing the Opposition protest against SIR, Pradhan further alleged that the country is witnessing these days that if anyone is carrying out the most anti-Constitutional acts, Rahul Gandhi is their ringleader.
Dubbing Congress as a directionless party, Pradhan went on to say that the Congress Party has become directionless and is resorting to defaming constitutional institutions like the ECI.
“The SIR is not being conducted for the first time. It is a regular nationwide process of the Election Commission in every state. Since independence, the Election Commission has had an independent and continuous process to refine and organise the electoral roll. The Congress Party first lies about EVMs, sometimes raises the issue of Maharashtra, sometimes of Haryana, and builds a new mountain of lies,” Pradhan alleged.
Attacking the Congress at a time when the entire Opposition, led by the party, was on a protest march, Pradhan further alleged, “First, the Congress made EVMs an issue, then lied about Rafale, then sided with China in our border dispute with China. They questioned the Indian Army and India’s sovereignty, about which the judiciary, perhaps for the first time in independent India, made such a harsh remark against a political figure, asking, ‘Tell us, whose side are you on?’”
He equated the Congress Party and its leader Rahul Gandhi with ideological directionlessness and deep confusion. “They have lost all sense of propriety in democracy. The combination of chaos and arrogance is part of their deliberate strategy to spread instability in the country. Their clear principle is that if they win elections, everything is fine, but when they lose, they find faults in the system.”
He also said that the Congress Party and its allies are engaged solely in vote-bank politics. “By making infiltrators into voters, they want to serve their political interests. When the Election Commission, as a constitutional and impartial body, presents them with the correct facts, they talk about dismantling that very same Election Commission. They even go so far as to use language such as ‘We will drop an atom bomb, the Election Commission will scatter,’” he said.
Dubbing Opposition protests as a bid to create chaos, he said that the Opposition parties don’t want to protest but rather want to spread chaos.
Defending the ECI for carrying out SIR, Pradhan categorically said, “The Election Commission is not the Congress’s private arrangement, nor is it their office or the AICC headquarters. It is a key pillar of India’s constitutional framework, whose strength and impartiality the country has witnessed and accepted over the last seven to eight decades.”
He also lambasted Rahul Gandhi over his language used against the ECI recently. “The kind of uncivilised and indecent language being used by Rahul Gandhi will be judged by the people of the country themselves. The Congress Party is pained that power has gone outside their family. From the time of Pt. Nehru to Indira Gandhi, then Rajiv Gandhi, and thereafter the mother-son duo running the government by remote control, and now the sister—this entire family has had a link with power,” he said.