New Delhi: The Lok Sabha on Wednesday witnessed sharp exchanges between Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah as a debate on electoral reforms triggered a political flashpoint, with both leaders accusing each other of misleading the House and the public.

The Home Minister defended the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, accusing the Opposition of spreading falsehoods and misleading citizens about the exercise.

As Shah argued that SIR is important for maintaining the integrity of electoral system and preventing “ghuspetiye” (infiltrators) from influencing democratic outcomes, Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi intervened, challenging the minister to an open debate and flagging alleged irregularities in voter lists in the Lower House. He said the government was evading his charges made during his ‘vote chori’ press conference.

“This is a scared and practised response,” he remarked, prompting a strong pushback from Shah.

Shah retorted that Gandhi had no authority to dictate the flow of his speech. “The LoP won’t decide order of what I say. He should have the patience to hear me out,” the Home Minister said.

As Opposition benches continued to intervene, Shah rebuked them with a remark that stirred protests. “Do bade bolte hai tab beech me nahi bolte (When two seniors are speaking, you should not interrupt),” he said.

Earlier, responding to the LoP’s allegations of widespread irregularities in the electoral rolls, Amit Shah said the government was committed to ensuring clean voter lists. He insisted that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) was a technical exercise meant to improve accuracy.

“Leader of Opposition flagged irregularities in electoral rolls, SIR is an exercise to have pure electoral rolls,” Shah said. Taking aim at the Congress, he added, “The BJP lost elections in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, then poll rolls were good, but when we win elections, everything is bad. When you win elections, the EC is great; when you lose, the EC is incompetent, such double standards will not work.”

“The Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi, at a press conference on November 5, 2025, made claims regarding a ‘nuclear bomb.’ Within that context, he mentioned that in Haryana, 501 households were affected. The Election Commission clarified that House Number 265 is not a small house; it is on a one-acre plot with multiple families living there. However, individual house numbers were not assigned to each family, so multiple generations of a single family could be living under House Number 501…” he said.

Justifying why the government resisted a debate over two days, Shah said the Opposition had insisted on discussing SIR directly, something he maintained was outside Parliament’s purview. “There was a logjam for the first two days over discussion on this matter. This sent the wrong message to the people that we do not want to discuss this. I would like to make it clear that the Parliament is the biggest panchayat for discussions in this country. BJP-NDA never runs away from discussions… For two days, we told the Opposition that this should be discussed later, after two Sessions.

But they didn’t relent. We agreed… Why did we say ‘No’? There were two reasons for the ‘No’. One, they wanted a discussion on SIR. I am very clear that there cannot be a discussion on SIR in this House. SIR is the responsibility of the Election Commission. India’s EC and CEC do not work under the Government. If a discussion is held and questions are raised, who will answer them? When they said that they are ready to discuss electoral reforms, we agreed immediately…”