PoliticsBJP
Amit Shah tells Rahul Gandhi to brace for a 'crushing defeat' in 2029
In his first remarks on the protests against the Chief Election Commissioner, the Home Minister said the Congress should look at its own record instead of blaming the SIR. Jairam Ramesh hit back within hours.
Key points
- Amit Shah said the NDA would win the 2029 Lok Sabha election with a massive majority.
- He asked whether Congress defeats were the result of the SIR, saying the revision began only after 2024.
- Jairam Ramesh called Shah the co-architect of Vote Chori and said his prediction would not come true.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday told Rahul Gandhi and his allies to prepare for another defeat in the 2029 Lok Sabha election, in his first public response to the opposition’s campaign against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
Speaking to reporters in New Delhi, Shah said the Congress had lost election after election since Rahul Gandhi took charge of the party, and that the revision of voter lists could not explain it.
“I also wish to tell Shri Rahul and his associates to brace themselves for a crushing defeat in 2029,” Shah said. “The NDA is set to secure a massive majority in the 2029 general elections.”
‘You need to introspect’
Shah pointed to a string of recent results to argue that the Congress had lost touch with voters. He said the party had won no seat in the bypolls in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, and that the BJP had taken Nagaon in Assam by about 1,42,000 votes and Nandigram with 76% of the vote. He also cited BJP wins in local body polls in Rajasthan, Gujarat and Tripura.
“I also wish to ask Rahul ji: is this the result of an ‘SIR’?” he said. “You need to introspect.” The SIR, he added, began only after 2024, while the Congress’s losing run is much older. In Gujarat, he said, the party has not won an election since 1985.
He accused the opposition of planning to get infiltrators registered as voters, saying “the people of this country have fully understood your strategy of shielding infiltrators”.
Shah also played down the opposition’s show of strength in Delhi. On Monday, leaders of the INDIA bloc, including Rahul Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge, Akhilesh Yadav and Mamata Banerjee, marched in central Delhi and filed a joint petition in the Supreme Court against the SIR. Shah said a crowd of about 8,000 people and cadres from 14 parties packed into a stretch of a kilometre and a half did not make Rahul Gandhi the voice of the nation. That voice, he said, lies in rural India. “You have no reach there.”
“You cannot win the trust of the country’s people through fabricated media events and echoes of lies,” he said.
Congress hits back
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh replied on X within hours, accusing Shah of preparing to rig the next election.
“The co-architect of Vote Chori has, not surprisingly, ‘predicted’ the 2029 Lok Sabha election,” Ramesh wrote. “But it is not going to happen.”
He added: “The HM should start preparing to defend himself from the investigations that will start into his many nefarious deeds.”
On the same day, Rahul Gandhi hosted INDIA bloc leaders, Left parties, student groups and activists at his residence, where they agreed to keep up the campaign for Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation.
“No matter what happens, political resistance will continue, people’s resistance will continue, and it will triumph,” Gandhi said after the meeting.
Opposition leaders have said the protests will spread beyond Delhi. Shah, for his part, has offered the bypoll and civic results as his answer.