TIL Desk/National/New Delhi/ Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday unleashed a stinging attack on the Congress party, saying its “mad devotion” to the Gandhi family had turned the country into a jail during the Emergency, and 43 years later the party’s psyche of sycophancy had still not changed. Speaking at a Bharatiya Janata Party event to mark the imposition of Emergency by Indira Gandhi on June 25, 1975, Modi dubbed the 21-month period — a black spot on Indian democracy when hundreds of opposition leaders were jailed — as a “sin of the party”.
“We would never have imagined that in the lust for power and the mad devotion to a family, those who talk big things about democracy and the Constitution had turned the country into a jail… for selfish personal interests of that family. Big leaders were put behind bars,” Modi said. “An atmosphere of fear prevailed then. We will rarely find another example of how the Constitution was misused as a tool for a family,” he said in a fierce attack to counter opposition accusations that India was under “undeclared Emergency” under the BJP rule.
After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attack on the Congress and the Gandhi family over the Emergency, the party hit back equating him with Mughal emperor Aurangzeb and alleged that he was even more cruel and “enslaved democracy” in the country for the past 49 months. Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said Modi was launching an attack on the Congress only to hide his own failures and the “false” promises and “jumlas” he had made to the public before coming to power.
