New Delhi, June 25: Union Home Minister Amit Shah said it is very important to remember the day of the emergency, so that in the future no person can impose their dictatorial mindset
He was addressing a program organized on the occasion of ‘Samvidhan Hatya Diwas’ in New Delhi today. Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, Railways, and Information & Broadcasting, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Lieutenant Governor of Delhi Vinai Kumar Saxena, Chief Minister of Delhi Rekha Gupta, and many other dignitaries were present on the occasion.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that bad incidents should usually be forgotten in life. And it is correct, but when it relates to social life and national life, then bad incidents should be remembered forever, so that the youth and teenagers of the country are cultured, organized, ready to defend, and ensure that such bad incidents are never repeated.
He said that with this thought in mind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to commemorate 25 June every year as ‘Samvidhan Hatya Diwas’ and the Union Home Ministry issued a notification related to it. How the country was reduced to a prison during the Emergency, the soul of the country made dumb, the courts made deaf and pens of the writers were made to fall silent, keeping those things in mind and after giving it a thought, it was decided to commemorate today as ‘Samvidhan Hatya Diwas’. This will bring awareness to the younger generations about the incidents that happened during the Emergency. He said remembering the Emergency is not just knowing history, but it is a warning.
The essence of the Constitution was destroyed with just one sentence. He said that two significant events took place on June 12, 1975: the Allahabad High Court invalidated the election of the Prime Minister and barred her from contesting elections for six years. A state of shock spread across the country, though the Supreme Court later granted a stay on the order.
Emergency, the Shah Commission stated that the acts of detention, forced sterilization, and demolitions had created an atmosphere of fear across the country that had no parallel elsewhere. Newspaper offices were shut down, 253 journalists were arrested, 29 foreign journalists were expelled from the country, and several newspapers protested the Emergency by leaving their editorial columns blank—most notably, The Indian Express and Jansatta. Their electricity supply was cut off, parliamentary proceedings were censored, the judiciary was effectively brought under control, and democratic rights were completely suppressed throughout the country.