Winter Session in Rajya Sabha: Arun Jaitley targets Congress with Hitler reference
New Delhi: Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley on Friday took a dig at the Congress during a special discussion on the Constitution and compared the 1975 Emergency imposed by the Indira Gandhi government to Hitler’s Germany. “Those who talk about intolerance snatched the right to life and liberty,” he said.
Speaking in the Rajya Sabha, the finance minister rebutted point by point comments by the Congress and other Opposition parties in the Lok Sabha, where the discussion began on Thursday to mark the birth anniversary of Dr B.R.Ambedkar, the architect of Constitution.
Initiating a discussion on the “Commitment to India’s Constitution”, Mr Jaitley said measures should be taken to strengthen the Constitution and ensure that democracy is not subverted again. He narrated the sequence of events that took place in Hitler’s regime, suggesting that these were replicated by Mrs Gandhi who imposed Emergency.
“There are worse illustrations in history when constitutional systems are used to subvert the Constitution. You have the most glaring example in the world when in 1933 in Germany emergency was declared,” he said.
He said Hitler, using the pretext of a threat to “set ablaze the German Parliament”, imposed Emergency, detained Opposition members to gain a majority to amend the Constitution, censored the press and came out with a 25-point economic programme.
“You impose Emer-gency, detain Opposition, amend the Constitution, impose censorship on newspapers and announce a 25-point economic programme. Thereafter, you brought a law that no action taken by the government was justiciable in court and then Hitler’s immediate adviser, Rudolf Hess, in his speech ended with the sentence that ‘Adolf Hitler is Germany, Germany is Adolf Hitler’,” he said.
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