Cong imposed Emergency, now accusing BJP of suppressing democracy: Rajnath

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday said the Congress which imposed the Emergency was now falsely accusing the BJP government of suppressing democracy.

Singh addressed two rallies in Agra in Uttar Pradesh on Sunday and trained his gun on the Congress.

Describing the Emergency, which was imposed on this day in 1975 by the Indira Gandhi government, as "the dark phase of Indian democracy", the senior BJP leader said, "I was jailed for 16 months and kept in isolation for about two-and-half months during the Emergency.... Many innocents were kept in jails."

"But today the Congress party is falsely accusing the BJP government of suppressing democracy...if the BJP was strangulating democracy then how was it possible for the Congress to form governments in states like Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan," he said.

He said the Congress and other opposition parties are coming together with the singular motive of defeating Prime Minister Narendra Modi and grabbing power.

Highlighting various achievements of the Narendra Modi government in its nine years, Singh said India has now become a powerful country and all nations across the globe look towards it for solutions to various issues.

"Every Indian felt proud when PM Modi addressed a joint session of of the US Congress. It was an honour for the nation," he said.

Before Modi came to power in 2014 the Indian economy ranked 11th globally but in nine years since it has become the fifth largest economy in the world, he said.

He also highlighted the evacuation of Indian nationals from Ukraine during its war with Russia and India supplying COVID-19 vaccines to several countries during the pandemic.