Those who imposed Emergency have no right to profess love for Constitution: PM Modi

NEW DELHI: On the 49th anniversary of Emergency, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday that its dark days are a reminder of how the Congress subverted basic freedoms and trampled over the Constitution which every Indian respects greatly.

Hitting out at the main opposition party, he said in posts on X that those who imposed the Emergency have no right to profess their love for our Constitution.

Modi said, "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."

"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 said.

Just to cling on to power, the then Congress Government disregarded every democratic principle and turned the nation into a jail, Modi said, adding that any person who disagreed with the party was tortured and harassed.

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

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

The prime minister said the anniversary on Tuesday is 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.