Congress losing polls due to leadership issues not SIR: Amit Shah in Lok Sabha

Union home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday launched a scathing attack on the Congress party for blaming external factors for its electoral defeats and said the principal Opposition party was losing elections not because of special intensive revision of voter roles, but because of its leadership issues.

Speaking in the electoral reforms debate in Lok Sabha in the presence of Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, who earlier dared Shah to hold a debate on the three press conferences that he did on the issue of alleged voter theft, the Home Minister said that it was the Congress party that had mastered the art of 'vote chori'.

"I will tell you what vote Chori is. In 1946, as many as 28 provincial Congress committees voted for Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to become Congress president and Prime Minister of free India. Jawaharlal Nehru got only two votes. But who became the Prime Minister of independent India? Jawaharlal Nehru," said Shah.

The Home Minister went on to question the famous Allahabad High Court judgment that had declared the Rae Bareli election of late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's null on grounds of the unfair means.

"That was what Chori on a mass scale. When the court annulled the election of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, she amended the Constitution to grant herself immunity from court cases. She later super ceded the senior most judges of the Supreme Court of India to make the fourth judge in hierarchy the chief Justice and won the case in the Supreme Court also. This is called vote theft," Shah said.

He further said that in the latest dispute that has reached a Delhi court, it is alleged that former Congress president Sonia Gandhi became a voter even before she became a citizen of India.

After Congress MP and leader KC Venugopal objected to Amit Shah's statement about Sonia Gandhi, Shah said he had only referred to the dispute in the Delhi court and would come back once Sonia Gandhi responded to the notice issued by the court in the matter.

Venugopal said the Home Minister was misleading with his remarks.

Attacking the Congress party for habitually blaming institutions instead of itself for serial election losses, Amit Shah said the Congress blames the election commission and EVMs when it loses elections and will one day be questioned by its own workers as to how is it losing poll after poll.

"The reason Congress is losing elections, not vote Chori or special intensive revision of electoral roles. Congress is losing elections because of its leadership issues," said Shah.

The home minister also questioned the opposition MPs for piloting and impeachment motion against the judge of the Madras High Court for his ruling to preserve a tradition of lamp lighting at the top of a hill.

"They have now begun bringing impeachment notices against judges to appease their vote banks. Even Uddhav Thackeray has signed the impeachment notice," said Shah.

Amit Shah added that the BJP spent a better part of its life sitting in the Opposition, but never chose to blame the election commission or the EVM for its election losses.

"We introspect when we lose elections. The Congress on the other hand has started the tradition of blaming institutions for its ills. This Congress habit has also spread to its partners in the INDI bloc," said Shah.

He went on to name opposition stalwarts including Rahul Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee, MK Stalin and Bhagwant Mann, who, he said, had at some point in time blamed the election commission for their losses.