Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi today criticised Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s address in Parliament during the discussion on electoral reforms. Gogoi said that the Home Minister did not respond to the questions raised by the Opposition and instead read out what he described as a prepared script.
Gogoi said that the Opposition had expected clear replies from the Home Minister on issues raised over the last two days. “We thought the Home Minister would answer the questions of the Opposition that we raised. I think he was given a script and he kept reading according to the script,” Gogoi said.
He said that important points raised by Congress MP Rahul Gandhi and other leaders such as Akhilesh Yadav, Kalyan Banerjee and Supriya Sule were “completely ignored”. Gogoi argued that the Home Minister claimed that Congress leaders had never gone to the Election Commission but the party had in fact held several press conferences outside the Commission office and had filed complaints “many times”. 
Gogoi also attacked the ruling BJP over the voter list. He said that Amit Shah spoke about the voter list being “polluted”, but questioned why the BJP did not notice these problems when the party was speaking about winning “400 paar” before the elections.
Gogoi alleged that the BJP carried out “vote chori” in Haryana, Bihar and Maharashtra. “To protect your government, you did vote chori,” he said.
Meanwhile, during the discussion, several Opposition MPs walked out of the Lok Sabha while Amit Shah was speaking. Responding to the walkout, Shah said that the Opposition could boycott the session any number of times, but the government would not allow what he described as “infiltrators” to vote in India.
Shah also said that the government’s policy would remain focused on identifying, deleting and deporting infiltrators. According to Shah, the Congress and its allies were trying to give recognition to such people and include them in the voter list during elections.
He added that he had made strong remarks about Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi during his speech and questioned why the Opposition chose to leave only when he mentioned infiltration.
