Marking the 49th anniversary of the imposition of Emergency, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said the dark days showed how the Congress subverted basic freedoms and trampled over the Constitution.

Taking a dig at the opposition, he said those who imposed the Emergency have no right to profess their love for the Constitution.

His response came a day after the INDIA bloc mounted a massive protest inside the Parliament premises against the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government.

In a series of posts on ‘X’, Modi wrote, “Today is a day to pay homage to all those great men and women who resisted the Emergency. The #DarkDaysOfEmergency remind us of how the Congress Party subverted basic freedoms and trampled over the Constitution of India which every Indian respects greatly,”

“”Those who imposed the Emergency have no right to profess their love for our 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 prime minister added that 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.

June 25, 2024, marks the 49th anniversary of the imposition of Emergency by the country’s first woman prime minister, Indira Gandhi. The Emergency, spanning from 1975 to 1977, was a period marked by suspension of civil liberties, censorship of press, and widespread persecution of political opponents under the leadership of Indira Gandhi.

Modi said the then Congress government had disregarded “every democratic principle and made the nation a jail”. He said those who disagreed with the Congress were tortured during the Emergency, and socially regressive policies were unleashed.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah said the episode is the biggest example of the Congress’s long history of attempts to kill democracy.

BJP president J P Nadda said on ‘X’ that those who claim to be the guardians of Indian democracy today had spared no efforts to suppress the voices raised in the defence of constitutional values.

Defence minister Rajnath Singh also said the Emergency is a black chapter in the history of Indian democracy.

On Monday, INDIA bloc leaders had staged a protest by holding out copies of the Constitution inside the Parliament premises. Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi, party chief Mallikarjun Kharge, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and DMK M Kanimozhi were among several Opposition leaders who took part in the protest.