The 45th anniversary of the Emergency on Thursday turned into an occasion for political jostling between the BJP and the Congress.
Home minister Amit Shah, in a series of tweets, launched attacks on Congress’s “one family” and the latter responded with swipes on the “govt of 2 people only”.
Indirectly referring to the recent sacking of Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha, Shah asked why the party still had the mindset of Emergency days. “During the recent CWC meet, senior members and younger members raised a few issues. But they were shouted down,” one of Shah’s tweet said. “A party spokesperson was unceremoniously sacked. The sad truth is —leaders are feeling suffocated in the Congress,” Shah tweeted.
This was followed by a long tweet with several questions through which Shah sought to slam Congress for its “Emergency mindset”.
“Why does the Emergency mindset remain? Why are leaders who don’t belong to 1 dynasty unable to speak up? Why are leaders getting frustrated in Congress?” Shah asked.
Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala hit back in the same style, highlighting the popular perception that the current regime was a Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duopoly. “As India’s ruling party, BJP needs to answer: Why is its majoritarian rule described as Govt of 2 people only & all others as mere side kicks? Why is horse trading, mass defections & institution capture its only legacy? Why is it obsessed in its vile hatred of Nehru-Gandhi’s,” Surjewala tweeted.
Responding to Shah’s charge that some leaders who tried to speak up at the CWC meeting were shouted down, Surjewala came up with a list of senior BJP leaders who were pushed to the margins.
“And so spoke those who occupied present positions by forcibly retiring & humiliating every patriarch & colleague who built them,” he tweeted with the names of L.K. Advani, M.M. Joshi, Sushma Swaraj and Kalraj Mishra among others.
On Wednesday, BJP president J.P. Nadda had targeted the Congress by equating it to a “dynasty” that had been “rejected and ejected”.
The sharp attacks come in the wake of pertinent questions raised by top Congress leaders over the killing of 20 soldiers in Ladakh and the ongoing border tussle with China.
The ruling BJP has been constantly terming these questions as efforts to harm national interest and morale of the soldiers and using its attack on the “dynasty” to shift focus.
“On this day, 45 years ago one family’s greed for power led to the imposition of the Emergency...,” Shah said referring to the imposition of Emergency by Indira Gandhi on June 25, 1975.