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New Delhi: A year into being India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi recalled the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi between 1975-77 and said on June 25, 2015: “Personally, the Emergency brings back many memories. As youngsters, we learnt a lot during the anti-Emergency movement.” 

On October 10, 2016, 12 years into being prime minister, Modi and his government showed how true his own words were, and how they would remain memorable for India’s youth when he unleashed the Delhi Police – controlled by Union home minister Amit Shah – to crack down on any and every sign of protest in the national capital demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over the conduct of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. 

The protest came in response to a nationwide call issued by the Cockroach Janta Party along with other student bodies and Left groups to march to Jantar Mantar demanding Kumar’s resignation and the complete rollback of the SIR. As Delhi turned into a fortress with over 25,000 security personnel locking down the capital, 45 metro stations shut, rail services to the city suspended, thousands detained including the CJP leaders, groups of marching protesters, bystanders, political leaders, four former chief ministers, several journalists and even Supreme Court lawyers. 

Amid the sweeping detentions across the national capital, in an expression of an undeclared emergency, while both Modi and Shah remained silent on why the state machinery was coming down so hard on peaceful protesters, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sought to defend Kumar. This, despite the fact that the Election Commission is a separate constitutional body and not an arm of the government.........

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