Rahul admits ‘Emergency’ was his grandmother’s mistake but downplays Indira’s attempts to tamper with Constitution and sabotage democracy

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said the Emergency imposed by his grandmother and former prime minister Indira Gandhi was a “mistake” during a virtual conversation with Professor Kaushik Basu of Cornwell University in the US. The Congress MP also said that what happened during that period was “wrong”.

“I think that (Emergency) was a mistake. Absolutely that was a mistake. There is a fundamental difference between what happened in the Emergency, which was wrong, and what is happening now. Congress party, at no point, attempted to capture India’s constitutional framework. Our design doesn’t allow us that. Even if we want to do it, we can’t,” Rahul Gandhi said.

Strangely, Rahul compared the period of emergency with the present situation of India. During the period of emergency, India’s constitution was altered with brute force and all the major opposition leaders were put behind the wars. Today, no opposition leader is restricted from criticising the government. Rahul claims of the ruling dispensation hijacking ‘institutions’, but all his allegations could be found from the history of his own party.

Rahul Gandhi also played the victim card by claiming that the members of his own party opposed him when he tried to bring internal democracy to the Congress party. “I am the person who pushed elections in a youth organisation and student organisation and got a serious beating in the press for that. I was literally crucified for doing elections. I was attacked by my own party people,” Rahul Gandhi said.