New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi remained absent in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday (July 30) as the 16-hour discussion on the Pahalgam terror attack and Operation Sindoor came to a close.

Opposition members who had demanded that the special discussion be held in the presence of the prime minister walked out of the Rajya Sabha in protest, alleging that Modi had insulted parliament and the opposition.

On the other hand, Union home minister Amit Shah, who rose to reply to the opposition, accused the Congress of walking away, saying that they did not end terrorism in the past in order to “protect their vote bank”.

In a swipe at the opposition, Shah also said that while Modi is in his office, “mere se nipat raha hai, toh kahe unhe bula rahe ho? [‘I am getting it done, why are you calling him?’].”

The Rajya Sabha saw an uproar when Shah rose at the end of the discussion to give his reply. Leader of opposition and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said that Modi choosing to not come to the house is an “insult to parliament and to the opposition”.

“The members had demanded earlier that after the 16-hour discussion, the prime minister should come to the house and address us. Many of the questions that have been raised by us are directed at him,” he said.

Kharge added: “You can deal with us and we can deal with you. Despite the prime minister being here, if he does not come to the house, then it is an insult to the house. It is not correct to insult the parliament and the opposition.”

Opposition MPs had protested when Shah began speaking by chanting slogans of ‘prime minister come to the house”.

The home minister had said that the prime minister was ‘here’ in his office. In an apparent jibe at the opposition, he then said: “Unko zyada sunne ka shauk hai kya? Bhai, mere se nipat raha hai toh kahe unhe bula rahe ho? Aur takleef hogi. Ye samajhte nahi hai. [‘Do they have a hobby of listening excessively? I am getting it done, why are you calling him? There will be more suffering, but they don’t understand’]”.

As the opposition started walking out, Shah said they were leaving because ‘they did not end terrorism’ in order to “protect their vote bank”.

“It was already decided in the Business Advisory Committee meeting that the discussion can be as long as the opposition desires, but who will reply will be decided by the government and the prime minister. I know why they are walking out. Because for all these years to protect their vote bank, they did nothing to end terrorism and they cannot listen to this debate at all,” said Shah.

Following the opposition's walkout, Congress MP Jairam Ramesh said that the INDIA bloc parties had walked out because Modi “refused to be even present in the house”.

“The INDIA parties have just walked out of the Rajya Sabha at the gross insult to it by the prime minister, who refused to be even present in the house at the end of the 16-hour debate on Operation Sindoor [and the] Pahalgam terror attack, let alone speak as a reply to the discussion,” he said.

While Modi delivered an almost two-hour-long speech in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, he had only arrived in the house minutes before he was to speak, after remaining absent throughout the discussion.

While the opposition had demanded why Modi had not directly called out US President Donald Trump for his continued claims of mediating a ceasefire between India and Pakistan following the four-day-long military conflict between the two countries in May, the prime minister did not name Trump.

Instead, he said that “no world leader asked India to stop Operation Sindoor”, while skipping any mention of security lapses behind the Pahalgam terror attack.

Following the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack and the subsequent Operation Sindoor, the opposition’s demands for a special session of parliament had not been heeded to.

Modi also remained absent from both the all-party meetings following the terror attack and India’s military operations – Operation Sindoor – on May 7 that targeted nine locations in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, which was followed by the biggest military conflict between the South Asian neighbours in decades.

Earlier on Wednesday, opposition members raised questions about the lapses that led to the Pahalgam terror attack, intelligence failures and India’s foreign policy following Operation Sindoor.

Modi’s speech on Tuesday, like Shah’s, had focused on the failures of the previous Congress governments, and accused former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru for his failures as well as the creation of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Pakistan itself by agreeing to the partition.

Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Manoj Kumar Jha said in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday that Nehru is the “life vest” of the BJP-led government.

“Nehru is the life vest of this government. When we sit in an airplane, they tell us that if the plane sinks, blow up the life vest … while landing in the water,” he said.

Jha added: “Nehru comes up again and again. I said in the previous house as well, that it would be better if I file a petition that Jawaharlal Nehru must come forward. Those who have to stand in his defence will do so, people like us. On the other side, call those people who see Nehru everywhere. If even after so many years Nehru is troubling you, then there must have been something to the man,” he said.

Jha also said that national unity in times of grief should not be used as a shield against criticism.

“After Pahalgam I had written several articles, one of which was ‘unity in grief’. Whenever there is trouble, this country becomes one. National unity in times of grief should not be used as a shield to protect the government from valid criticism. This should be clear in a democracy,” he said.

“We have made the nation's security, a national issue, a subject of sloganeering.”

Trinamool Congress MP Sushmita Deb said that no one in the opposition has said that Operation Sindoor was not a success, but that the government has to provide answers for events that took place before and after the military operations.

“Our question is, what was the government doing before and after Operation Sindoor? … Twenty-six innocent civilians were killed by four terrorists in Pahalgam. There was no intelligence, no security arrangement to protect the tourists. Who will answer for this? The home minister and the government have to answer to this,” she said.

“The vice president of this country was removed within 24 hours, but the Intelligence Bureau chief was given an extension despite so many deaths in Pahalgam. Within hours of Modi's speech in the Lok Sabha, the US president once again repeated his claim. Is this not a cause of shame for us?”

Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut also demanded that Shah take responsibility and asked if a resignation should come from Nehru, US Vice President J.D. Vance or Trump.

“If there has been a security lapse and 26 people have died, 26 women have had their sindoor wiped out. Who will take responsibility and who will resign? Pandit Nehru, J.D. Vance, or President Trump? This country's home minister has to resign. Even after 26 people have died, there has been no resignation, no apology from anyone. This is the state of this country,” he said.

On Tuesday, Shah chose his reply in the Lok Sabha to announce that the three suspected militants who were gunned down a day earlier on the outskirts of Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir were involved in the Pahalgam terrorist attack.

His statement came after Monday’s discussion saw the opposition raising questions about why the Pahalgam attackers had not been caught close to 100 days after the attack.

In the Rajya Sabha, Shah added that the three attackers who were killed in ‘Operation Mahadev’ were shot in the head.

“I had received a lot of calls from across the country as well as from the families of the Pahalgam victims that whenever the attackers are caught, they should be shot in the head. Coincidentally, during the encounter, all three have been shot in the head,” he said.

The rest of Shah’s speech was much the same as in the Lok Sabha, where he blamed the Congress for Pakistan-sponsored terrorism.

Earlier, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar in his speech in the Rajya Sabha said that the United Nations had, for the first time, recognised the Resistance Front as a proxy of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba in a recent report by the UN Security Council’s monitoring team.

The Wire has reported however that a review of the report shows that it only cites the views of member states and does not offer any conclusion of its own.

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