Day after ruckus, discussions on electoral reforms, Vande Mataram to continue in Parliament | Top points

On Tuesday, both National Democratic Alliance and the INDIA bloc exchanged barbs over electoral reforms and the special intensive revision in the lower house.

Both the Houses of the Parliament witnessed heated discussions on Tuesday on electoral reforms and Vande Mataram as leaders such as home minister Amit Shah, Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav and union parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju took the floor among others.

On Tuesday, Lok Sabha witnessed ruckus during a heated discussion on electoral reforms during the winter session of the Parliament. (Sansad TV )

The storm in the Parliament during its ongoing winter session, which began on December 1, is expected to continue on Tuesday as the Lok Sabha will continue discussion on electoral reforms and the upper house will carry on the discussion over Vande Mataram.

Follow LIVE updates on the Parliament session here

On Tuesday, both National Democratic Alliance and the INDIA bloc exchanged barbs over electoral reforms and the special intensive revision in the lower house. While the government accused Congress of hiding its poll failures, the Opposition reiterated its ‘vote theft’ allegations.

Parliament winter session | What's on agenda today?

• After a day of heated debate over electoral reforms on Tuesday, Lok Sabha is set to carry on the discussion on Wednesday as well with both the NDA and the opposition bloc expected to engage in a war of words.
• Rajya Sabha will also continue the debate on national song Vande Mataram on the occasion of its 150th anniversary on Wednesday, a day after Amit Shah took the floor and delivered a fiery speech and attacked the Opposition for linking the debate with the upcoming state assembly polls in West Bengal.

Here is how electoral reforms, Vande Mataram dominated Parliament

• On Tuesday, Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi tore into the National Democratic Alliance and accused the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh of capturing India’s institutions. He also reiterated his ‘vote theft’ allegations. While gesturing towards the treasury branches, Gandhi said, “The biggest anti-national act you can do is vote ‘chori’. Because when you destroy the vote, you destroy the fabric of this country, you destroy modern India, you destroy the idea of India. Those across the aisle are doing an anti-national act.”
• Gandhi also accused the Election Commission of colluding with the NDA to shape elections and demanded that machine-readable voter lists should be given to all political parties a month ahead of elections after the Special Intensive Revision. He also called for rolling back the law that says that CCTV footage of polling be destroyed after 45 days and scrapping of the immunity to election commissioners.
• Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav also said in the Lok Sabha that the election commission needs to be impartial for election reforms to take place and suggested that an enhanced panel select the chief election commissioner and fellow election commissioners.
• The Opposition was countered by law minister Arjun Ram Meghwal who argued since 1952, the special intensive revision (SIR) of the voters’ list has been held multiple times and that it is a necessary process to clean up electoral rolls which change due to migration and rapid urbanisation.
• In the upper house, home minister Amit Shah took the floor to rebut the allegations that the discussion on national song Vande Mataram was linked with the upcoming West Bengal election. He said that while the song was composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in Bengal, it became the voice of India’s freedom struggle and transcended borders.
• He also sought to attack the Congress by saying that when the song turned 50, two stanzas were cut from it, paving way for appeasement politics and subsequently the country’s partition. “Many people like me believe that if Congress had not divided Vande Mataram under its policy of appeasement, the country would not have been divided, and today the country would be whole,” Shah said.
• Speaking on why the discussion on Vande Matram was necessary, Shah took a veiled jibe at Congress Lok Sabha MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra who spoke on the issue a day before and said, “Some members raised questions in the Lok Sabha on the need for these discussions on Vande Mataram. The need for discussion on Vande Mataram, the need for dedication towards Vande Mataram, was important then; it is needed now, and it will always be significant even in 2047.”
• However, Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge backed Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and said that Vande Mataram was being discussed in the Parliament to “to deflect attention from the problems country is facing”, adding that “PM Modi and Amit Shah leave no chance to insult Jawaharlal Nehru, and other Congress leaders”. On Monday, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had said that holding a “debate” on the national song — focused on why only two stanzas of the original poem were adopted — was “an insult” to freedom fighters and makers of the Constitution who had made the decision.