BJP to launch nationwide programme to mark anniversary of Emergency, ‘expose Congress authoritarianism’

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday said that it would launch a nationwide programme on June 25 to mark entering the 50th anniversary of the proclamation of the Emergency in 1975, to “expose” what it termed the “Congress party’s authoritarianism” and “disregard for the Constitution”.

According to a statement by Lok Sabha MP and the BJP’s media cell head Anil Baluni, party president J.P. Nadda would address party workers at the party’s national headquarters in New Delhi on the theme ‘Dark days of democracy’.

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Mr. Baluni said that even to this day recalling the Emergency “continues to evoke deep-seated fear”.

“To expose the Congress’ authoritarianism and its disregard for the nation’s Constitution, the BJP has launched a nationwide programme,” he said.

Emergency: The Dark Age of Indian democracy

On June 25, 1975, the late Indira Gandhi, then Prime Minister, announced the imposition of Emergency in a broadcast on All India Radio, shortly after the Supreme Court granted a conditional stay to an Allahabad High Court verdict declaring her election to the Lok Sabha null and void. The 21 months was known for forced mass sterilisation, censorship of the press, suspension of Constitutional rights, and centralisation of power.

The programme is especially significant as the recently concluded Lok Sabha election saw a major theme with regard to the Constitution and perceived fears that the BJP, if granted a brute majority in the Lok Sabha, would substantially change the Constitution and provisions of reservations for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. On Monday, in fact, Opposition MPs held a protest, on the first day of the convening of the 18th Lok Sabha, holding aloft the Constitution of India and vowing to protect it.

The BJP’s programme, seen as a response to this, will, according to Mr. Baluni, “expose how the Congress strangled the Constitution, deprived citizens of their rights, committed atrocities against Opposition leaders for 21 months, suppressed the media, silenced truth-tellers, undermined India’s democratic integrity and oppressed people under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act and Defence of India Rules”.