At an event organized by Cornell University on Tuesday Rahul Gandhi said that emergency imposed between the period of 1975 to 1977 by the late then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was a “mistake” and what all happened during that period was also “wrong”.
What all happened during the emergency was “fundamentally different from the current scenario” as in emergency freedom for speech and expression was totally snatched from the media, many opposition leaders were imprisoned and people’s constitutional rights and civil liberties were also restricted, said Gandhi.
“I think that was a mistake. Absolutely, that was a mistake. And my grandmother (Mrs Gandhi) said as much. (But) the Congress at no point attempted to capture India’s institutional framework… frankly, it does not even have that capability,” said Gandhi while conversing with a top economist Kaushik Basu.
BJP often questions Congress about that period, mainly when it too get accused of restricting the freedom of speech and expression of media.
Last year the Congress was bullied by the Union Home Minister Amit Shah in a series of tweets in which he tweeted, “one family’s greed for power” which turned the nation into a “prison”. He had also tweeted, “The press, courts, free speech… all were trampled over. Atrocities were committed on the poor and downtrodden” .
Over the issue outspoken many times the Supreme Court in December last year said that it would soon figure out whether the emergency can be declared “wholly unconstitutional” after so many years.
