Those who imposed Emergency can't profess love for Constitution: PM attacks Congress

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday (June 25) that the Emergency's "dark days" are a reminder of how the Congress subverted basic freedoms and trampled over the Constitution which he said every Indian respects.

Hitting out at the main Opposition party on the 49th anniversary of the 1975-77 Emergency, he said on X that those who clamped the Emergency rule have no right to profess their love for the Constitution.

"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," he said.

"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," he added.

He said the Congress government in 1975, only to cling on to power, disregarded every democratic principle and turned the nation into a jail, Modi said. He added that anyone who disagreed with the party was tortured and harassed.

"Socially regressive policies were unleashed to target the weakest sections," the prime minister said.

On June 25, 1975, then prime minister Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency in the country, suspending civil liberties, jailing Opposition leaders and dissidents and effecting press censorship.

Modi said the anniversary on Tuesday was a day to pay homage to all those "great men and women" who resisted the Emergency.

The first day of the 18th Lok Sabha on Monday witnessed a war of words between Prime Minister Modi and Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge over the imposition of Emergency.

(With inputs from agencies)