New Delhi, July 28: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday launched a scathing attack on opposition parties in the Lok Sabha for repeatedly disrupting External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s address on Operation Sindoor, calling their behaviour “disrespectful” and politically motivated.
Shah, intervening during the session, urged Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to censure the opposition MPs for constantly interrupting Jaishankar, who was rebutting former US President Donald Trump’s recent claim of preventing an India-Pakistan war through trade threats.
“If this continues, we also won’t be able to stop our MPs. When their speakers were talking, we listened patiently—even to lies. I will expose those lies tomorrow. But today we even swallowed them. Yet they cannot even listen to the truth,” Shah said, visibly frustrated with the continuous sloganeering and heckling from the opposition benches.
He insisted that Jaishankar, as India’s Foreign Minister, was delivering a responsible and constitutionally accountable statement on the floor of the House, and deserved to be heard in full. “It does not behove the opposition to repeatedly needle the minister,” Shah said. “Mr Speaker, you should grant protection. Everyone knows how to needle others. Not that we cannot needle.”
The Home Minister warned that if the disruptions were not firmly dealt with, the ruling party would find it difficult to restrain its own members from retaliating.
Taking a pointed jibe at the Congress, Shah accused the opposition of putting more faith in foreign narratives than in the Indian government. “They don’t believe the External Affairs Minister of their own country, but they believe another country,” Shah said, referring to the opposition’s repeated references to Trump’s comments.
“I can understand the importance of foreign powers in their party, but that does not mean they will impose their party politics on Parliament. A minister who has taken an oath under the Constitution is speaking. He is responsible. This is the reason they are sitting there — and will continue to sit there for the next 20 years,” Shah added, in a sharp dig at Congress’s electoral fortunes.
Earlier in the session, Jaishankar reiterated that no foreign mediation—including by the United States—took place during Operation Sindoor, the 2019 military response following the Pulwama attack. He categorically rejected Trump’s claim that he had prevented a nuclear escalation between India and Pakistan by threatening to cancel trade talks.
The session saw repeated adjournments as opposition MPs raised slogans and demanded the Prime Minister’s presence in the House over several issues, including the recent Pegasus revelations and ongoing ethnic violence in Manipur.
Despite the chaos, the government stood firm in its defence, with Shah doubling down on the charge that the opposition’s disruptive tactics stemmed from a lack of trust in India’s constitutional institutions and leaders.
The Speaker is expected to take a view on the disruptions before the House reconvenes on Tuesday.
