A word has been expunged from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech in Parliament on Thursday, when he took on the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha on the National Population Register (NPR). A word was also removed from comments made by Opposition leader Ghulam Nabi Azad of the Congress.

It is rare for a Prime Minister’s words to be deleted from parliamentary records but not unprecedented. Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu expunged the word used by Modi on Thursday during his reply to the discussion on a motion thanking the President for his address to the joint sitting of both Houses of Parliament at the start of the Budget Session.

“Chairman was pleased to direct expunction of a certain portion of the proceedings of Rajya Sabha dated February 6 at about 6.20 and 6.30 pm,” a statement issued by the Rajya Sabha Secretariat said.

Naidu routinely expunges any remark found unsuitable from Rajya Sabha’s records after going through the proceedings of the day. This has been done on several occasions but rarely was any remark of Modi expunged with this being the second of his in a year. In 2018, some words were dropped from Modi’s comments on Congress leader BK Hariprasad. He had used wordplay on Hariprasad’s initials, which was seen as derogatory.

Modi on Thursday had made the remark as he launched a strong defence of the NPR saying the country’s population register was being updated with demographic information for better targeting of Government’s welfare schemes. He had targeted the opposition Congress for making a U-turn, saying the party had brought the NPR in 2010 and was later updated in 2015 by adding photographs and some biometric information.

Naidu also expunged a word from Leader of the Opposition and senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad’s statement made after Modi had finished his speech. Azad had stated that the Congress was in favour of giving citizenship to persecuted migrants from Pakistan but was against framing of a law based on religion.

In 2013, some words were expunged from then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s comments in the Rajya Sabha during a heated argument with then Opposition leader Arun Jaitley. Some parts were removed from Jaitley’s remarks as well.

“Parliament has a large compilation of unparliamentary words. Every year, new words are added to the list. Recently, words like Pappu, behnoi (brother-in-law), daamad (son-in-law) were also added,” informed a source.

Godse, or Mahatma Gandhi’s killer Nathuram Godse, used to be an unparliamentary word. In 2015 then speaker Sumitra Mahajan removed it from the list of unparliamentary words. The term has been used extensively in sparring between the BJP and the Opposition over Gandhi. The ruling party has been accused of being soft on members who have glorified Godse, like Lok Sabha MP Pragya Thakur.