Had Vajpayee been in Indira’s shoes, he’d have declared Emergency too: Raut

Reacting to the raging controversy over the NDA government declaring June 25 as Samvidhan Hatya Divas or Constitution Murder Day, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut has claimed that had the late BJP stalwart Atal Bihari Vajpayee been in a situation that the then prime minister Indira Gandhi was in, he would have declared Emergency as well.

He reminded people that even the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Shiv Sena founder Balasaheb Thackeray had openly supported the Emergency declared by Indira Gandhi on June 25, 1975. Raut said it had been a matter of national security.

Why Emergency was declared

“An open announcement was made from Ramlila Maidan. Our Army was told not to follow the government’s orders. The police were being incited to not follow the government’s orders. So, in such a situation, had Atal Bihari Vajpayee been the prime minister, he, too, would have imposed an Emergency. It was a matter of national security. Some people were making bombs and setting off bombs in various places,” Raut said at a press conference on Saturday (July 13).

Raut added that Home Minister Amit Shah did not know “anything about the Emergency” and the BJP praises Bala Saheb Thackeray with the “fake Shiv Sena” (referring to the faction led by Eknath Shinde) without knowing that the Shiv Sena founder had openly supported the Emergency. And so had RSS, Raut said. “He (Thackeray) supported the Emergency because he felt the anarchy in the country needed to be controlled,” he added.

“BJP not saviours of Constitution”

Raut further pointed out that even though the Janata Party came to power after that and the Vajpayee government came in future, they did not feel that the Constitution had been murdered. “What happened in 10 years of BJP rule will be remembered. They are also not the saviours of the Constitution,” he told news agency ANI.

“If we talk about Emergency, then each and every day of the [Narendra] Modi government in the past 10 years will be marked for murdering the Constitution,” said Raut, adding that the BJP “have no work and so they are diverting the people’s attention”.

The Emergency was lifted in 1977 after Gandhi’s defeat in the general elections she called, with the 21-month preceding period seeing the suspension of fundamental rights, the imposition of strict censorship, the curtailing of press freedom and civil liberties, and the arrests of thousands of Opposition leaders, activists and journalists without due process.

(With agency inputs)