Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, July 12: Continuing its fight against the opposition as the conscience keeper of the constitution, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the centre has decided to commemorate a 50 year old event by observing June 25 as the “Samvidhan Hatya Diwas” every year with the Congress and the BJP kept branding each other as the “dictatorial forces.”
This is to commemorate the imposition of internal emergency on June 25, 1975, by the then Congress government headed by Mrs Indira Gandhi. “This day will commemorate the massive contributions of all those who endured the inhuman pains of the 1975 Emergency,” the Union Home Minister Amit Shah said on Friday. The Congress promptly called the announcement, “Yet another headline-grabbing exercise in hypocrisy.”
In a social media post on X Mr Shah said “the decision by the government is intended to honour the spirit of millions who struggled to revive democracy despite facing inexplicable persecution at the hands of an oppressive government.” “The observance of ‘Samvidhan Hatya Diwas’ will help keep the eternal flame of individual freedom and the defence of our democracy alive in every Indian, thus preventing dictatorial forces like the Congress from repeating those horrors,” he added.
A gazette notification issued on Friday by the Union Home Ministry notes that Emergency was declared on June 25, 1975, following which there was “gross abuse of power by the government of the day and people of India were subjected to excesses and atrocities.” The people of India have abiding faith in the Constitution and the power of its resilient democracy, it said.
“Therefore, Government of India declares 25th June as ‘Samvidhan Hatya Diwas’ to pay tribute to all those who suffered and fought against the gross abuse of power during the period of Emergency and to recommit the people of India to not support in any manner such gross abuse of power, in future,” says the notification.
Mr Shah’s post was endorsed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who reiterated that June 25 would pay homage to those “who suffered due to the excesses of the Emergency, a Congress unleashed dark phase of Indian history.” “To observe 25th June as Samvidhan Hatya Diwas will serve as a reminder of what happens when the Constitution of India was trampled over,” he added in his post.
The announcement by the NDA government came in the backdrop of a raging debate over the Constitution. In the campaign for the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, the Congress told voters Mr Modi’s BJP did not respect the Indian Constitution and would change it if it got an outright majority for the third straight term, while the BJP strongly rejected the charge.
In the end, the BJP got 240 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats — 32 short of the majority mark. But the NDA, of which the BJP is a part, got a comfortable majority with 293 seats, paving the road for a historic third term for Mr Modi. The Congress improved its tally to 99 (from 52 in 2019).
Buoyed, the Congress has been harping on its Constitution pitch. In the very first session of the 18th Lok Sabha in June, members of the party and some of its allies took oath holding the Constitution. In a sharp comeback, PM Modi said during the session that the Congress party that once imposed the Emergency had no right to profess love for the Constitution. In the Lok Sabha, as India marked the 49th anniversary of the imposition of the Emergency, Speaker Om Birla termed it the darkest chapter in India’s history and had also found elaborate mentioning in the President Droupadi Murmu’s address to the Joint Houses of Parliament drawing strong protests from the Congress and some of its allies
Throughout Narendra Modi’s tenure as Prime Minister, the Congress and other opposition parties have accused the BJP and the Central government of violating the Constitution as well as weakening constitutional institutions, including the election commission and the judiciary.
They got more ammunition when, in the months leading up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Karnataka BJP MP Anantkumar Hegde and the party’s Meerut candidate Arun Govil, among others, said the NDA had set itself a target of winning 400 seats because it wanted to amend the Constitution.
The opposition, which had come together under the INDIA umbrella, seized on the opportunity to claim that the BJP wanted to end reservation and “dismantle” the Constitution. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and others also began carrying a copy of the foundational document and stated repeatedly that the INDIA alliance was fighting to protect the Constitution.
As the INDIA narrative began to gain traction, the BJP and the government went into damage-control mode, claiming that the opposition was spreading lies. The issue did, however, work to the INDIA alliance’s favour in several states and is believed to have played a role in limiting the BJP below the majority mark.
Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh branded Mr Shah’s announcement as a “headline-grabbing exercise.” He also accused PM Modi of subjecting the Constitution of India and its principles, values, and institutions to “systematic assault.”
“Yet another headline-grabbing exercise in hypocrisy by the non-biological PM who had imposed an undeclared Emergency for ten long years before the people of India handed him a decisive personal, political, and moral defeat on June 4, 2024 – which will go down in history as “Modi Mukti Diwas.” This is a non-biological PM who has subjected the Constitution of India and its principles, values, and institutions to systematic assault. This is a non-biological PM whose ideological parivar had rejected the Constitution of India in Nov 1949 on the grounds that it did not derive inspiration from Manusmriti. This is a non-biological PM for whom democracy means only ‘demo-kursi’,” Ramesh wrote in an X post.
