New Delhi/Bhopal: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said those who imposed Emergency have no right to profess their love for the Constitution, as top BJP leaders trained their guns on the Congress with two party chief ministers demanding apology from the main Opposition party.
As the BJP and the Congress crossed swords on the 49th anniversary of imposition of Emergency, Modi also said that its dark days are a reminder of how the Congress subverted basic freedoms and trampled over the Constitution which every Indian respects greatly. The Congress hit back at Modi and accused him of enforcing an “undeclared emergency” in the last 10 years which caused a “deep trauma” to democracy.
On June 25, 1975, the then prime minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of Emergency in the country, suspending civil liberties, jailing Opposition leaders and dissidents and effecting press censorship. Emergency was lifted on March 21, 1977. In a no-holds-barred attack on the Congress, senior BJP leader and Union Home Minister Amit Shah said the Opposition party crushed the spirit of the Constitution several times for the sake of “maintaining a certain family in power”. He said the Emergency was the biggest example of the Opposition party’s long history of killing democracy and harming it repeatedly.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav while demanding an apology from the Congress said the Emergency was a “dark period” which caused shivers even after five decades. “It was such a dark period that even today the whole country shivers on remembering it. The Congress should apologise for it. Many families were destroyed due to their excesses.”
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said the country will not pardon the Congress and demanded that the Opposition party apologize to the people. In posts on X, Modi said that just to cling on to power, the then Congress government disregarded every democratic principle and turned the nation into a jail. “Socially regressive policies were unleashed to target the weakest sections.”
“These are the same people who have imposed Article 356 on innumerable occasions, got a Bill to destroy press freedom, destroyed federalism and violated every aspect of the Constitution. 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,” Modi said.