Congress to train guns on centre in Parliament amid SIR debate

Congress MP and Leader of Opposition (LoP) Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday will open the much-demanded debate in Lok Sabha on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise. KC Venugopal is one of the senior Congress leaders participating in the debate on election reforms. Others include Manish Tewari, Varsha Gaikwad, Mohammed Javaid, Ujjwal Raman Singh, Isa Khan, Ravi Mallu, Imran Masood, Gowaal Padavi, and S Jyotimani. In Rajya Sabha, Union Home Minister Amit Shah is likely to initiate the discussion on SIR. A total of 10 hours has been earmarked for the entire discussion in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.

The opposition parties have been demanding a debate on SIR for months, with Congress alleging discrepancies in the voter list. Gandhi has been a constant critic of the SIR drive initiated by the Election Commission of India (ECI), alleging discrepancies in the voter list and the pressure on Booth Level Officers (BLOs). "SIR is a calculated ploy - where citizens are being harassed, and the deaths of BLOs from unnecessary pressure are dismissed as 'collateral damage'. This is not a failure, it's a conspiracy - a sacrifice of democracy to protect those in power," Rahul Gandhi said on November 23. "Under the guise of SIR, chaos has been unleashed across the country - the result? In three weeks, 16 BLOs have lost their lives. Heart attacks, stress, suicides - SIR is no reform, it's an imposed tyranny. The ECI has created such a system where citizens have to flip through thousands of scanned pages of a 22-year-old voter list just to find themselves. The intent is clear - the right voters get exhausted and give up, and vote theft continues unabated. India builds cutting-edge software for the world, yet India's Election Commission is still stuck on erecting a jungle of paper. If the intent were pure, the list would be digital, searchable, and machine-readable - and the ECI would take adequate time to focus on transparency and accountability, instead of blindly pushing work in a 30-day frenzy," he added. On Tuesday, Rahul Gandhi is expected to further sharpen his attack even as the Government readies to respond with its counter. A total of 10 hours has been earmarked for the entire discussion in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. Meanwhile, on the list of business for the day, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Radha Mohan Singh and Virendra Singh will present four reports of the Standing Committee on Defence on action taken by the government on the observations/recommendations contained in various other reports on demands for grants of the Ministry of Defence for the year 2025-26. United People's Party Liberal (UPPL) MP Joyanta Basumatary and BJP MP Rodmal Nagar will law the Final Action Taken statements of the Standing Committee on Water Resources on various issues, including "'Review of Upper Yamuna River Cleaning Projects upto Delhi and River Bed Management in Delhi' and 'Demands for Grants (2024-25)' of the Ministry of Jal Shakti". The 6th Session of the 18th Lok Sabha and the 269th Session of the Rajya Sabha commenced on Monday, December 1, marking the beginning of the Winter Session of Parliament. The session will conclude on December 19.