During a press conference held in Odisha's capital city of Bhubaneswar on November 2, Bharatiya Janata Party MP Sudhanshu Trivedi launched a pointed political counterattack against the Congress party and the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi. Trivedi observed that while the wider international community is grappling with profound turbulence and geopolitical instability, India continues its upward momentum under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP-led NDA administration.
Economic Momentum And World Bank Poverty Benchmarks
The BJP lawmaker underscored that India has emerged as the fastest-growing major economy on the global stage. He drew attention to the World Bank's 2025 report published two days earlier, which commended the country's decisive strides in poverty alleviation over the preceding 12 to 13 years.
According to the World Bank findings cited by Trivedi, the proportion of India's population living beneath the poverty line dropped dramatically from 27 percent in 2011-12 to just 2.5 percent at present. Alongside economic expansion, the nation has registered substantial advancements across frontier technologies, artificial intelligence, and domestic defence production. Trivedi remarked that this sustained progress is causing discomfort among certain forces, asserting that the political opposition has unfortunately turned into a tool for elements uneasy with India's national self-respect and development.
Detailed Fact Breakdown On 13 Crore Voters
Responding directly to statements by Rahul Gandhi regarding 13 crore voters, Trivedi laid out a granular administrative breakdown of the numbers. He explained that within the group of 13 crore individuals being cited by the opposition, as many as 2 crore 80 lakh are deceased citizens whose records reflect natural demographic attrition.
Trivedi further detailed that 12 crore people have physically shifted residences across the country. Within this relocated demographic, 6 crore individuals have successfully registered as voters at their new locations, while registration updates for the remaining 6 crore are still pending. Additionally, the records account for 1 crore duplicate registrations involving entries across two distinct voter rolls, along with 3 crore untraceable or missing entries. He argued that routine administrative revisions are being politicised without examining the foundational data.
Decades Of Electoral Decline And Ideological Critique
Turning to electoral legitimacy, Trivedi accused the Congress leadership of attempting to foster instability, declaring that the principal opposition party and Rahul Gandhi have themselves turned into an obstacle for democratic norms. He emphasized that the Congress has been decisively rejected across multiple states over decades, noting its absence from power in Odisha for 25 consecutive years.
Expanding on this historic decline, Trivedi noted that the Congress has been missing from office in Gujarat since 1995, absent in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar since 1990, out of power in West Bengal since 1977, and ousted from Tamil Nadu since 1967. Furthermore, the party has remained out of governance across Tripura, Nagaland, and Sikkim for the past 30 years. Trivedi pointed out sharp inconsistencies within the opposition camp, stating that in Kerala, where Congress holds administrative sway, the Home Minister has explicitly acknowledged benefits derived from SIR. He questioned whether the leadership in Karnataka and Kerala is presenting the accurate picture or if the national party command is speaking contrary to its own state administrations.
Concluding his remarks, Trivedi noted that physical extremist insurgencies that previously plagued forest and border corridors across Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Andhra Pradesh have been decisively curbed. However, he warned that the ideological mindset behind those movements persists, alleging that intellectual radicals have now established themselves in the capital city of Delhi.
