Between October 16 and 24, 2025, Bihar witnessed four speeches by senior BJP leaders that share a striking narrative structure. Each began by invoking faith or welfare, pivoted to ideas of gratitude or debt owed to the ruling party, and ended by identifying an internal enemy—”infiltrators,” “namakharams,” or those marked by a visible Muslim identity.
Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) filed three separate complaints with the Election Commission of India (ECI) during the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) period, citing violations of electoral law and criminal statutes. The fourth speech—by Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Siwan—was delivered two days later and completes the arc that the complaints had already begun to document.
The four speeches, read together, construct a continuum of rhetoric that moves from ridicule to coercion to threat: the ridiculing of religious language, the coercion of loyalty tests tied to welfare benefits, and the threat of identification and expulsion directed at an entire community.
The complaint against Giriraj Singh
Dates and locations: October 18 (Arwal) and October 19 (Begusarai), 2025
Union Minister Giriraj Singh’s two speeches are at the base of this chain. In Arwal, he told a story about a “Maulvi” and the Ayushman card, asking whether the man would swear “on Khuda” to acknowledge benefits received under Modi’s government. “I don’t need votes from namakharam people,” Singh declared, transforming gratitude for welfare into a religious oath of political loyalty.
A day later in Begusarai, he manipulated the word “haram” into a slur, questioning the faith and morality of Muslims who benefited from government schemes but did not vote for the BJP. The complaint describes these statements as “coercive and communal,” arguing they violate the MCC’s ban on religious appeals and constitute “undue influence” under Section 123(2) of the Representation of the People Act (RPA), 1951.
CJP’s complaint sought immediate ECI action, including a show-cause notice, FIR registration under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) relating to promoting enmity, and removal of the videos from circulation. It framed Singh’s language as “a public loyalty test administered through humiliation.”
The complete complaint may be read below.
The complaint against Ashok Kumar Yadav
Date: October 16, 2025
Location: Darbhanga (Keoti constituency)
Three days earlier, Madhubani MP Ashok Kumar Yadav addressed “Muslim brothers” at a public rally, instructing them: “Say ‘tauba tauba,’ I will not eat free grain; I will not take a gas cylinder; I will not walk on the road built by Modi ji; I will not cross the bridge built by Modi ji.”
The crowd laughed. The complaint did not. CJP’s complaint describes the speech as “mocking religious practice and publicly demanding a ritual renunciation of entitlements,” amounting to psychological coercion of a targeted group. It invokes Sections 123(2), (3), and (3A) of the RPA and Sections 196 and 297 of the BNS, which criminalise promotion of enmity and acts prejudicial to public peace.
By equating welfare use with political loyalty and faith with betrayal, Yadav’s speech redefined citizenship as conditional. It fused spiritual vocabulary (“tauba tauba”) with partisan mobilisation, turning a phrase of repentance into a performative punishment.
The complete complaint may be read below.
The complaint against Nityanand Rai
Date: October 22, 2025
Location: Hayaghat, Darbhanga
When Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai took the stage in Hayaghat, the stakes rose. His speech moved beyond ridicule to overt nationalism, religion, and xenophobia. “I want to be born only as a Hindu, only in this Bharat. We live by Krishna’s teachings,” he began, before pivoting sharply: “Those wearing reshmi salwar and topi are against the message of the Gita. Some want to bring in Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltrators and take away the livelihood of Bihar’s youth. You cannot include these infiltrators in the voter list.”
The complaint noted the gravity of a Home Ministry official using xenophobic tropes while the MCC was in force. It argued that such speech carries “the force of state policy” when uttered by a minister responsible for internal security. The complaint sought a show-cause notice, FIR registration, and referral to the Prime Minister’s Office for ministerial code violation.
In legal language, Rai’s speech blends three distinct offences: an appeal to religion for votes, the vilification of a religious group, and the use of a ministerial office to threaten administrative exclusion. In political terms, it sanctifies prejudice and embeds it within the authority of the state.
The complete complaint may be read below.
Amit Shah in Siwan: The arc completed
Date: October 24, 2025
Location: Siwan, Bihar
Speaker: Union Home Minister Amit Shah
Two days later in Siwan, Amit Shah’s campaign speech brought the narrative to its most explicit point. He invoked the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya as a triumph of faith and political will, asked voters whether they supported it, and immediately shifted to the question of “ghuspaithiya” — infiltrators.
“Rahul Baba says we should allow ‘ghuspaithiya’ in Bihar. People of Siwan, tell me — should these ghuspaithiya be removed or not? Should their names be on the voter list or not? I promise you, once the NDA wins again, the BJP will identify and expel each and every individual ghuspaithiya from the country.”
He concluded: “They are snatching our youth’s jobs and the ration of our poor. These infiltrators are involved in anti-national activities. The BJP is determined to pick them out one by one and expel them.”
In the arc that began with Giriraj Singh’s coercive mockery and moved through Rai’s sanctified nationalism, Shah’s words were the culmination: an explicit promise of identification and expulsion, tying the future of governance to the physical removal of a constructed internal enemy.
Delivered during the MCC period, it was not merely an opinion—it was a campaign pledge of state action.
A shared political logic
Across all four speeches, three interlocking strategies emerge:
- Welfare as a political debt: Welfare schemes—rations, gas cylinders, Ayushman cards—are presented not as rights but as favours to be repaid through political allegiance. Those who refuse are branded “ungrateful” or “namakharam.”
- Religion as a mobilising instrument: Sacred references are casually inserted into electoral appeals. “Swear on Khuda,” “tauba tauba,” “I want to be born only as a Hindu,” “Ram Mandir”—each invocation draws moral legitimacy from religion and aligns it with party identity.
- ‘Infiltrator’ as the enemy within: The trope of the “ghuspaithiya” shifts the narrative from faith to belonging. It identifies a community—implicitly Muslim, explicitly Bengali-speaking or Rohingya—as outsiders usurping entitlements, jobs, and rations. It allows the campaign to move from gratitude and shaming to exclusion and threat.
Each strategy reinforces the next. Gratitude establishes hierarchy, religion sanctifies loyalty, and the “infiltrator” label converts political opponents into existential threats. Together, they blur the boundary between welfare policy, religious identity, and citizenship status.
Legal violations and democratic harm
The three complaints collectively invoke the Model Code of Conduct, the Representation of the People Act, and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. Under the Model Code of Conduct, parties are prohibited from appealing to religion, caste, or communal feelings and from using temples, mosques, or religious symbols for electoral gain. The MCC came into force in Bihar in early October 2025 after the ECI announced the poll schedule.
Under the Representation of the People Act, these speeches fall within multiple definitions of “corrupt practice”:
- Section 123(2) – Undue influence through coercion or threat.
- Section 123(3) – Appeal to religion for votes.
- Section 123(3A) – Promotion of enmity or hatred for electoral advantage.
- Section 125 – Offence of promoting enmity between classes in connection with elections.
The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), which replaced the IPC in 2023, reinforces this framework through Sections 196, 297, and 356, criminalising the promotion of enmity, insult to religion, and public mischief.
Each complaint demands that these provisions be activated: show-cause notices by the ECI, FIRs by the police, and debarment of the speakers from further campaigning.
The legal core is clear: these are not mere lapses in civility but prima facie offences that undermine the constitutional promise of free and fair elections.
The arc of escalation
When read in sequence, the four speeches trace a visible escalation in both tone and institutional proximity to power:
- Ashok Yadav’s speech begins with ridicule.
- Giriraj Singh’s adds humiliation through oaths and public shaming.
- Nityanand Rai’s brings religion and national security together, as a sitting Home Ministry official.
- Amit Shah’s completes the circle by translating rhetoric into an explicit promise of expulsion.
This progression is not accidental. It reveals a tested campaign grammar where each rung normalises the next: what begins as jest ends as policy.
The broader stakes
These episodes are not confined to Bihar. They speak to a larger transformation of Indian electoral speech where the distance between communal rhetoric and administrative policy has collapsed. When senior ministers use the language of exclusion, the threat is no longer hypothetical—it carries bureaucratic plausibility.
For voters marked by faith, language, or origin, such speeches blur the line between citizenship and suspicion. When welfare becomes conditional, religion becomes campaign currency, and “infiltrator” becomes a category of governance, the right to participate as an equal citizen is quietly replaced by a test of loyalty.
Conclusion
The complaints filed by CJP during the MCC period document more than isolated offences; they expose a deliberate strategy of electoral communication. The sequence from Ashok Yadav’s “tauba tauba” to Amit Shah’s “expel each and every ghuspaithiya” reveals how easily populist politics collapses welfare into servitude, faith into allegiance, and citizenship into a privilege contingent on identity.
If the Election Commission and the police fail to act decisively, the precedent will be set: that speeches promising the exclusion of communities can be made under the protection of the very laws meant to prevent them.
In the end, the question that echoes across these rallies in Bihar is the one Amit Shah himself asked in Siwan: “Should their names be on the voter list or not?” The answer, if democracy is to retain meaning, cannot be decided by a campaign crowd—it must remain the inalienable right of every citizen, beyond the reach of faith, fear, or political favour.
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