New Delhi, June 25 (PTI): Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today hit out at detractors for casually using ‘undeclared emergency’ to describe the present BJP government saying they should introspect where they were during the Emergency under Indira Gandhi.
In a facebook post on the anniversary of the Emergency, Jaitley asked the critics what was their publicly declared stand during those 19-months, while stating that it has become customary for the critics of any government in India to casually use an expression ‘undeclared emergency’.
Detailing circumstances under the Emergency, the minister in the post titled “Forty Two Years Ago - The Emergency” said an era of sycophancy always suffers from a dichotomy.
And this led to Indira Gandhi committing the ultimate error of ordering an election which witnessed a rebellion against her emergency regime, he wrote.
Jaitley said the first Act after the imposition of the Emergency was the detention of the political opposition under the Preventive Detention Law.
District Magistrates and Collectors were handed over blank detention forms to enable them detain thousands of leaders and workers of the political opposition with no grounds of detention being given.
He said both the Constitution of India and the provisions of the Representation of the People Act were retrospectively amended, so that each ground on which Gandhi s election had been set aside could be statutorily reversed.
