Four sitting Governors and BJP leader Subramanian Swamy will be among the 16 persons who will be honoured on the birth anniversary of loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for stoutly “defending democracy” during the Emergency era.
Reacting sharply, Opposition JD(U) said that the BJP was trying to “appropriate” the legacy of the socialist leader ahead of the Bihar polls, which kicks off a day after JP’s 113rd anniversary, which falls on October 11. The four sitting Governors are — Om Prakash Kohli (Gujarat), Balaramdas Tandon (Chhattisgarh), Vajubhai Vala (Karnataka) and Kalyan Singh (Rajasthan) — all of whom have been BJP leaders.
Others to be honoured are former Governor Bhai Mahaveer, NCP leader DP Tripathy, senior BJP leaders Karia Munda, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, former Union Minister Jayawantiben Mehta, journalists Virendra Kapoor, Rambahadur Rai and Kotamraju Vikram Rao, Gandhian professor Ramji Singh, Eswar das Mahajan and Kameshwar Paswan. The 16 persons will be honoured by the Prime Minister at an event being organised by lok Nayak Jaya Prakash Narayan Jayanti Utsav Samiti at the Vigyan Bhawan here.
“They are being honoured for stoutly defending democracy and the rights of the people guaranteed by the Constitution of India during the dark period of Emergency between 1975 and 1977,” the Government said.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said, “Emergency during which the constitutional rights of the people of the country were subverted, remains as an indelible blot in the post-Independence history of our country.