NEW DELHI: Union home minister Amit Shah on Tuesday said Congress leader Rahul Gandhi should “introspect” rather than blame the Election Commission (EC) or the SIR exercise for the opposition party’s electoral setbacks, citing its defeats in the recent byelections and the Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation polls.“I also wish to ask Rahul ji: is this the result of an ‘SIR’? You dismiss the popularity of the BJP and Modi ji by attributing it to an ‘SIR’. You need to introspect,” Shah said.Shah also highlighted the Congress’s continued poll losses in Gujarat, pointing to its defeat in the Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation polls, held in the state capital.“In a major state (Gujarat) where you (Rahul Gandhi) once held power, you have failed to win a single election in 41 years. This is a matter that demands serious introspection on their (Congress’) part,” the senior BJP leader added.The home minister then listed the BJP’s victories in the byelections to the Nandigram and Rejinagar assembly seats in West Bengal and the Nagaon Lok Sabha constituency in Assam, where the party’s candidates won by large margins in last week’s bypolls.He also mentioned the Thattanchavady assembly seat in Puducherry, the byelection for which was won by the BJP’s ally, the All India NR Congress.“Recently, byelections were held in Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. I want to inform the people of the country today that the Congress party did not win a single seat. In Nagaon, the BJP candidate won by a margin of 1,42,000 votes, wresting the seat from the Congress. In Nandigram, the BJP candidate won with 76% of the vote, securing a massive lead of 1,22,000 votes. In Rejinagar, the BJP won by over 75,000 votes, snatching the seat from the Trinamool, while in Puducherry, the NDA candidate from ally AINRC won by 8,482 votes. The Congress secured only 22% of the votes,” Shah said.His remarks came shortly after leaders of the Congress-led opposition INDIA bloc held a joint press conference at Rahul Gandhi’s residence in New Delhi, where they vowed to continue their campaign for the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar and the invalidation of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls over alleged irregularities in the exercise.
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The Indian Express reported last month that the two Election Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had raised objections at least 14 times over the past 10 months to decisions they claimed were taken without their knowledge, including those related to the SIR.The report brought further scrutiny on Kumar, who has repeatedly been accused by the opposition of facilitating “vote chori” (vote theft) in favour of the BJP since becoming CEC in 2025.