• Kishore Varshney

The announcement of the notification by the Home Minister of the NDA government Amit Shah to celebrate June 25 as ‘Samvidhan Hatya Diwas’ is the beginning of an unfair tradition full of cunning decisions. Actually, this announcement after 49 years is a fear of the opposition leader Shri Rahul Gandhi raising the basic issues of the people of the country openly in the Parliament recently. It will be appropriate if the governments of Gujarat and the country announce to celebrate Communal Hate Day etc. for the Naroda Patia massacre or the Rath Yatra taken out by Advani ji. Such traditions are unfair.

In the last ten years, when Indian democracy was strangled, many leaders, journalists, teachers and various people were jailed without any reason, hundreds of people died standing in queues in banks due to demonetization, countless poor and labourers of the country died due to sudden lockdown and more than 750 farmers died due to crossing all limits of inhumanity over the three black laws - is this a golden chapter of the Indian soul? This is more horrifying than an undeclared emergency. Only if the coming government starts Constitution Revival Day on June 4, will such a beginning be appropriate.

The government should focus on the future of the youth, employment issues, inflation issues, poverty and economy along with the record fall in the rupee, threats posed by China and Pakistan on the borders, and not take vindictive action against the opposition as it has done in the past. The present government should also dispel the illusion without delay that neither the opposition is as weak as it was ten years ago nor the present government is strong. Is it not inhuman that in one go more than 150 MPs were expelled from the Parliament and many laws were made in a hasty and dictatorial manner and more than 20 cases were filed against Shri Rahul Gandhi in various areas of the country. Even his membership of the Parliament was terminated and his bungalow was vacated within 12 hours.

In 1975, the then Prime Minister Smt. Indira Gandhi, troubled by the JP movement against the then Congress government, the public assassination of Railway Minister Lalit Narayan Mishra by bombing, daily attacks on government institutions, even calls for rebellion from the army, imposed emergency as a democratic reform process granted by constitutional rights, which was said to be wrong. No one supported the emergency. Apart from two former Prime Ministers Shri Rajiv Gandhi and Dr. Manmohan Singh, the current LoP Shri Rahul Gandhi even apologized. In 1977, Congress suffered defeat and the Janata Party government was formed, but in the mid-term elections held after two and a half years, the Congress government was re-established with full majority.

(The author is the former spokesperson of Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee)