In a sharp rebuttal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remarks on the Emergency, Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge accused him of imposing an “undeclared Emergency” during the last decade. Kharge alleged that the PM is raking up the past only to deflect attention and hide his government’s failures. The Congress chief also said that PM Modi talks of “consensus and cooperation” but does just the opposite.

“Narendra Modi ji, the country is looking forward to the future but you keep scratching the past to hide your failures. In the last 10 years, you made 140 crore Indians realise what ‘undeclared emergency’ is, which caused a deep trauma to democracy and the Constitution,” Kharge said in a post in Hindi on X.

“Breaking parties, toppling elected governments through the backdoor, misuse of agencies like ED, CBI, IT against 95 percent of opposition leaders, putting chief ministers in jail, and using the official machinery before elections and disturbing the level playing field, is this not undeclared emergency,” he said.

PM Modi on Tuesday said that those who imposed the Emergency have no right to profess love for the Constitution.

“The mindset which led to the imposition of the Emergency is very much alive among the same party which imposed it. They hide their disdain for the Constitution through their tokenism but the people of India have seen through their antics and that is why they have rejected them time and again,” PM Modi said in a post on X.

The Congress chief asked when 146 opposition MPs were suspended from Parliament and three new laws were brought to change the code of criminal procedure, Indian Penal Code and Indian Evidence Act, where was that consensus then.

“Where was the consensus when statues of stalwarts like Chhatrapati Shivaji, Mahatma Gandhi and Babasaheb Ambedkar were relocated within the Parliament complex without even asking the opposition. Where was this consensus when three new farm laws were forced on 15 crore farmer families and they had to sit on the roads for months together and atrocities were committed on them,” he said.

Kharge said there are several other examples when the government did not use consensus, including note ban, lockdown and electoral bonds law. Even your own leaders were kept in the dark, he alleged.

In the 17th Lok Sabha, only 16 percent bills, the least so far, were sent to Parliamentary Standing Committees and 35 percent of bills brought in Lok Sabha were passed within an hour, while 34 percent of the bills were passed within an hour in the Rajya Sabha, the Congress chief claimed.

“The BJP has disregarded democracy and Constitution while the Congress has always stood by democracy and the Constitution and will continue to do so,” Kharge said.