JOIN USTaking a dig at the Congress on the 42nd anniversary of the Emergency, Union Minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday asked the Opposition to “introspect their own roles” during those black days.
Countering the Opposition charge that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has unleashed an “undeclared emergency”, Jaitley said, “Those making these exaggerated comments need to introspect their own roles during the Emergency. Most of them were either supporting the Emergency or were absent in any protest against it.”
In his write-up, “Forty Two Years Ago – The Emergency”, released to the media, the senior BJP leader said it not only established the dictatorship of an individual, the then prime minister Indira Gandhi, but created an environment of tyranny and fear in the society, and the result was that most institutions collapsed on their own.
The Emergency was declared on the intervening night of June 25-June 26, 1975.
The minister said Indira suspended all the fundamental rights because she wanted to continue as prime minister, despite the Supreme Court granting conditional stay on an Allahabad High Court verdict, which had unseated her in a petition challenging her
election.
“The official reason was a threat to public order, but this was phoney reasoning. She wanted to continue in power and resorted to the imposition of Emergency,” he said.