The State BJP on Friday recalled painful days of Emergency clamped in the country on June 25, 1975 by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi while observing the day as a ‘Black Day’.Addressing a meeting organised at BJP State Headquarters, Union Minister Jual Oram spoke at length the harrowing ordeal of how thousands of leaders across the country were lodged in various jails for raising their voice against Indira Gandhi. He felicitated sixteen brave leaders who were jailed defying emergency.
Senior party leaders Biswabhushan Harichandan, Krushna Jagadev and Surendra lath elucidated how Indira Gandhi unleashed reign after clamping emergency which was nothing but murder of democracy.“Indira, who wanted to latch on to power even after the Allahabad High Court disqualified her as an MP, put all prominent Opposition leaders in jail. Many innocent people were made to suffer jail terms,” they said.
The leaders hailed the selfless contribution of the lakhs of people under the leadership of Jai Prakash Narayan, who dared to take on Gandhi to safeguard democracy in the country.Speaking on the occasion, BJP State President KV Singhdeo said the autocratic Indira even tried to project herself as the greatest leader of the country and engraved her achievements on a time capsule for the future generation to remember her.
Bhubanananda Tripathy, Gurucharan Jena, Sridhar Dash, Harihar Sahu, Surendra Naya, Binayak Senapati, Nirmal Kumar Jena, Prafulla Sahu, Pramod Patnaik, Kailash Tripathy, Nrusimha Charan Tripathy, Jahar Bose and Bipracharan Tripathy were felicitated for suffering jail terms during emergency.