Terming the "Emergency" imposed by late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975 as an

"assault on all democratic institutions", Union minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday

said the NDA government's critics using the expression "undeclared Emergency"
against it, "need to introspect their own roles during the Emergency".
"It has become customary for the critics of any government in India to casually use
an expression 'undeclared Emergency'. Those making these exaggerated comments were
either supporting the Emergency or were absent in any protest against the
Emergency," he wrote in an open letter on the BJP's website.
Most institutions collapsed on their own. The Emergency was declared on the
midnight of June 25, 1975. The ostensible and the official reason was a threat to
public order but obviously this was phoney reasoning," Jaitley said.
The minister was reacting to comments by the Congress that there was an "undeclared
Emergency" during NDA's rule. The comments were in response to Prime Minister
Narendra Modi's remarks during his monthly radio address 'Mann Ki Baat' earlier in
the day, where he had termed Emergency as "dark night" during which the whole
country had virtually become a "prison".
"...The real reason was that Indira Gandhi had been unseated in an election
petition by the Allahabad High Court and the Supreme Court had granted only a
conditional stay of the High Court order. She wanted to continue in power and
resorted to imposition of emergency to enable this to happen. It would be in the
fitness of things to remind those who loosely use a phrase undeclared Emergency
with what happened during that period," the minister wrote.

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