Jaitley flays Cong, reminds party of Emergency

 Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday took a dig at the Congress by seeking to create an allusion between the 1975 Emergency imposed by the Indira Gandhi government and Hitler’s Germany.

“Those who talk about intolerance snatched the right to life and liberty,” he said without naming former prime minister Indira Gandhi or the Congress.

Initiating a discussion in the Rajya Sabha on the “Commitment to India’s Constitution”, Jaitley said measures should be taken to strengthen the Constitution and ensure that democracy is not subverted again.

Jaitley also accused the Congress of not following the Constitutional provisions of Article 44 and 48 – that deal with the formation of a uniform civil code and prohibition of cow slaughter, respectively, which were brought in by Dr B R Ambedkar. Jaitley asked how the House would react if Ambedkar had made his 1949 speech today for implementing Article 44 and Article 48. It was clear from the Constitution that there should be no state religion and theocracy should not be practised and rights of the minorities were protected, too, he said. “During the 1970s, one of the biggest challenges we faced was that Article 21 was suspended and the government succeeded in convincing the Supreme Court that if Article 21 was suspended - and it was suspendable - the citizens of India have lost the right to life and liberty. This was dictatorship at its worst. Today if someone comes in front of the cameras and makes an irresponsible comment, we call it intolerance,” said Jaitley.

He went on to list events that led to Hitler's dictatorship in Germany and said, “We need to be reminded of our history.” He commented that Hitler's adviser always ended their speech with a sentence, “Adolf Hitler is Germany and Germany is Adolf Hitler.”

This was seen as his alluding to then Congress president D K Barooah’s “Indira is India and India is Indira.” Again, alluding to the row over appointment of judges, Jaitley said the Constitution envisaged that both the independence of judiciary and Parliament were balanced. “But, today, the absolute contrary to what Dr Ambedkar had envisaged is happening,” Jaitley said, adding, “We have reached a position where the CJI...will appoint and everyone else is irrelevant. No position of law can ever justify it.”

He said activism by courts many a time has raised questions that it should not cross the “lakshman rekha” and the “delicate” balance between different organs prescribed in the Constitution should not be affected. No law can ensure to maintain this, he added.