The 49th anniversary of the imposition of the Emergency became the springboard from which Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a sharp attack on the Congress, which has been accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of subverting the Constitution, to highlight how the Opposition party had in the past “trampled over the Constitution”.
He said that the “dark days” following the imposition of the Emergency on June 25, 1975, which led to the jailing of political activists and suspension of civil liberties, were a reminder of how the Congress “subverted basic freedoms and trampled over the Constitution which every Indian respects greatly”.
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“Those who imposed the Emergency have no right to profess their love for our Constitution,” Mr. Modi said in a series of posts on social media platform X.
“These are the same people who have imposed Article 356 (imposing President’s Rule in a State) on innumerable occasions, got a Bill to destroy press freedom, destroyed federalism and violated every aspect of the Constitution,” he posted.
“The mindset which led to the imposition of the Emergency is very much alive among the same Party which imposed it. They hide their disdain for the Constitution through their tokenism but the people of India have seen through their antics and that is why they have rejected them time and again,” Mr. Modi said.
The then Congress government had disregarded every democratic principle and turned the nation into a jail, “Just to cling on to power,” Mr. Modi said.
“Socially regressive policies were unleashed to target the weakest sections,” he added.
The BJP as a party marked the occasion with party president and Union Minister J.P. Nadda speaking to party workers at the BJP’s national headquarters in New Delhi, stating that the Congress’ decision to impose the Emergency “had shaken the very pillars of democracy”.
“During this period, those who today claim to be guardians of Indian democracy left no effort to suppress voices raised in defence of Constitutional values,” he said.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah recalled former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s words in Parliament on the subject of Emergency. “The yuvraj (young prince) of the Congress party (a reference to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi), has forgotten that his grandmother imposed the Emergency and his father, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, on July 23, 1985, said in the Lok Sabha, taking much pride in this horrific episode: ‘There is nothing wrong with an Emergency if any Prime Minister of this country who feels that an Emergency is necessary, under these circumstances and does not apply the Emergency, he is not fit to be the Prime Minister of this country’. This very act of taking pride in a dictatorial act shows that nothing else is dear to the Congress other than the family and power,” Mr. Shah posted on X.
