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.
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.
