BJP govt declares 'Samvidhaan Hatya Diwas'

New Delhi, NT Bureau: The Union government on Friday said it will observe June 25, the date Emergency was declared in 1975, as 'Samvidhaan Hatya Diwas' annually to pay tribute to those who suffered and fought against 'the gross abuse of power' during the period.

The Emergency lasted till March 1977. In a gazette notification, the Ministry of Home Affairs said that the date was being declared as Samvidhaan Hatya Diwas, or day of murder of the Constitution, to 'recommit the people of India to not support in any manner such gross abuse of power, in future'.

The people 'have abiding faith in the Constitution' and the 'power of India’s resilient democracy', read the gazette notification.

In a post, Union home minister Amit Shah said that on June 25, 1975, Indira Gandhi, the prime minister at the time, had 'strangled the soul of Indian democracy by imposing Emergency' by 'showing her dictatorial mindset'.

Shah said that the decision aims to honour the struggle of millions of individuals “who fought to revive democracy despite facing innumerable tortures and oppression of the dictatorial government”. The observance of the day will help keep alive the “eternal flame of protecting democracy and individual freedom inside every Indian," he added.

FROM THE PAST: WHO MADE ATTACKS ON THE CONSTITUTION?

1. Government will need a two-thirds majority in Parliament to make a new Constitution. —The then Ayodhya, BJP MP Lallu Singh in Apr, 2024
2. The Constitution has witnessed changes over a period of time. Change is a sign of development. It's not a bad thing... —Arun Govil, BJP Lok Sabha candidate from Meerut in 2024
3. The Constitution has to be amended as Congress people have fundamentally altered it by introducing some unnecessary things —The then BJP MP from Uttara Kannada, Anantkumar Hegde in March, 2024
4. BJP needs an overwhelming majority in Parl to change the Constitution —BJP candidate from Nagaur constituency, Jyoti Mirdha in Apr, 2024
5. In our Constitution, there is no mention of that unique constitutional development in ancient Bharat. To this day, his laws as enunciated in the Manusmriti, excite the admiration of the world and elicit spontaneous obedience and conformity. But to our constitutional pundits, that means nothing. —RSS mouthpiece Organiser published in Nov, 1949
6. India had written a Constitution imitative of the West, divorced from any real connection to our mode of life & from authentically Indian ideas about the relationship between the individual & society. —Deendayal Upadhyay, leader Bharatiya Jana Sangh, predecessor to the BJP
7. Reservations ought to be revisited (can be done only by making fundamental changes in the Constitution). —RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat was cited in an interview in RSS mouthpiece Panchjanya in 2015
8. The Constitution was of no use for the people of the country as it was based on the Government of India Act of 1935 …We need not fight shy of altering the Constitution completely… —K. Sudarshan, the then chief of the RSS in 2000