Hyderabad, Jun 20: Terming the imposition of Emergency by the Congress government in 1975 as a ‘draconian measure’, former Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu opined that the grand old party should apologise to the people for curtailing civil liberties during that period.
In an exclusive interview to PTI, Venkaiah Naidu, who was a student union leader while pursuing law in Andhra University in Visakhapatnam during the emergency period, said he had to spend nearly one and a half years in prison for raising his voice against the government of the day.
“It was a draconian measure. They (Congress) should have apologised for it. They should have regretted it. But the Congress never repented or apologised to the people. But they should have regretted imposing the Emergency. Now, on the occasion of the 50th year of emergency, they should express regret publicly,” Naidu said.
“I feel that they should really apologise to people for imposing emergency, for containing civil liberties, for imposing press censorship. And also, all civil liberties were taken away. Right to protest was taken away,” Venkaiah Naidu added.
The former VP said during the Emergency, every newspaper was put under censorship, and Press Council Act was amended too.
Recalling his memories, Naidu said, in the capacity of chairman of the Students’ Union, he invited Jayaprakash Narayan to address the students, for which he was arrested under MISA (Maintenance of Internal Security Act).
He further said he got a message from RSS sources that there was a possibility of him getting arrested as an emergency was imposed, prompting him to leave Visakhapatnam and go underground for two and a half months, visiting different places disguised.
He was finally arrested when he was going to Guntur from Vijayawada in September 1975 and sent to the Central prison in Visakhapatnam and later to Hyderabad.
“So, a total of around 17 months and 25 days or so, I was in jail. I was fortunate that I could meet important leaders, freedom fighters, and people belonging to different ideological backgrounds who were all there in the jail. In the jail, we were treated as political detainees,” he said.
According to him emergency measures were harsh in North India while in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu the implementation was not that strict as Vengala Rao (Congress) and Karunanidhi (DMK), then chief ministers respectively, did not enforce it vigorously.
Venkaiah Naidu said he, along with his friend, executed a plan of disrupting a public meeting of Sanjay Gandhi, son of Indra Gandhi, releasing non-venomous snakes on the ground, leading to a chaotic situation in the rally.
After the emergency, he unsuccessfully contested Lok Sabha elections on the Janata Party ticket from Ongole in AP, though the party came to power in 1977.
Marking the 50th anniversary of the imposition of the Emergency, the Ministry of Culture has planned to undertake a year-long commemoration of it starting June 25, and prepared a “schedule of activities” which it has shared with various states and UTs for them to host these events.
In a letter dated June 14, the ministry stated that the imposition of the emergency on June 25, 1975, stands as a “stark reminder of the darkest period in India’s democratic history.”
