Salman Khurshid defends Emergency, says govt did what it felt necessary

Hyderabad: There is no need for the Congress to apologise for imposition of Emergency in 1975 as people realised the decision was right and voted Indira Gandhi back to power, senior party leader Salman Khurshid has said.

"Why should we apologise? Why should we discuss Emergency? Certain things happened. After that, people of India voted Smt. Indira Gandhi as the Prime Minister. So, if we have to apologise, then people of India will also have to apologise...why did they elect her," the former External Affairs Minister said. Khurshid said there was no need of going back into history as the government of the time did what it felt was necessary.

"When people thought it was wrong, they voted us out of power. When they realised that the decision was right, they voted us back to power," Khurshid told PTI in an interview. "I think that's a statement of history... that's a pronouncement of history. Nobody has to apologise for anything. And what difference that apology would make?" he said when asked if Congress should apologise for Emergency.

"I think there are many issues that are only relevant to what happened at that time. I could even ask the Opposition to apologise because they created a situation in which it became necessary to bring about the Emergency," Khurshid said. The Congress leader said instead of "keeping reviving history over and over again", all should look at the problems the country faces today.

BJP patriarch LK Advani had recently whipped up a controversy by his remarks on Emergency when he told a national daily--"At the present point of time, the forces that can crush democracy notwithstanding the constitutional and legal safeguards are stronger." "Today, I do not say that the political leadership is not mature. I don't have faith because of its weaknesses. I don't have the confidence that it (Emergency) cannot happen again," Advani, now a member of the BJP's Margadarshak Mandal, said.

Latching on to Advani's comments, Congress and other opposition parties claimed those were directed at Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The saffron party veteran, however, later clarified he had not spoken about any individual and was apparently referring to the Congress. "If I am worried about the future of Indian democracy it is because no senior leader of the Congress has come out and expressed remorse about what the party did in 1975," he later said.