New Delhi: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Friday hit back at the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) claims that the “real motive” behind the anti-SIR protests is to force a “regime change”, recalling that the “Opposition had united” during the tenure of then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to “defeat” the government that had imposed the Emergency.
At an interactive session at the NDTV World Summit, Tharoor said: “(PM Narendra) Modi does keep talking about the Emergency and how the Emergency was overthrown. How was it overthrown? Through an Opposition, where the RSS and the BJP were merging with socialists and leftists. They all united in order to defeat the government that had declared the Emergency. That’s recent Indian political history, just half a century ago.”
He was referring to the defeat of the Indira Gandhi-led Congress regime by a unified Janata Party.
The former Union Minister also refuted the argument that violent protests like the one being staged in France could happen in India, saying: “I think the line is very clearly drawn by our Constitution, by our laws. It is that peaceful protest is the democratic right of every Indian citizen; violence is not.”
“What we’ve seen happening in France is not something that anybody in India’s political space would condone. I don’t, and I don’t think my party in any way would welcome (violence),” he asserted.
Maintaining that the Congress believes in peaceful protests, Tharoor said that the system can be “cleaned” if the government and the Election Commission are “willing to be accountable” for alleged irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls.
“We (the Congress) believe in peaceful, organised, and disciplined protest. At the same time, we expect that if we can actually find the government, and the Election Commission as well, willing to be accountable for the deep irregularities (in) the SIR process in the last couple of years, then we believe there will once again be a clean system,” he said.
“The electoral rules will be restored, no Indian citizen will be deprived of their constitutional right to cast their vote and determine their own political choices, and in a free and fair election there will not be ‘regime change’; there will be government change. The Indian public has seen the inadequacies of the present government, but we want to bring that (change) about through free and fair elections.”
Previously, AISA National President Neha Bora had praised Bangladesh’s Gen-Z movement, which she claimed served as “inspiration” for young people in India, while senior advocate Prashant Bhushan had said that the protests against the Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar have turned into a “fight for regime change”.
On how the Congress could align with the Left, AISA being one of them, while fighting each other in Tharoor’s home state Kerala and other places, Tharoor mentioned Neha Bora.
“These parties have their value, but Neha Bora wasn’t campaigning against us. I like her; she’s brought a lot of energy, colour, and life into the protest, the movement. It’s about the Congress party being a moderate party and about acceptance. It’s Opposition unity,” the Congress leader said.
–IANS–
