New Delhi, June 28 (IANS) BJP National Spokesperson Tuhin Sinha on Saturday launched a scathing attack on the Congress, demanding that the party apologise to the country for the 42nd Amendment of the Constitution, which he described as the “most frightening” and damaging amendment in India’s constitutional history.

His remarks came in response to Congress general secretary in-charge of communications Jairam Ramesh, who on Friday accused the RSS of having “never accepted” the Constitution. In a post on X from its official handle, the Congress had alleged that the thinking of the RSS-BJP is “anti-constitutional.”

“Now RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale has demanded a change in the Preamble of the Constitution. Hosabale says the words ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ should be removed from the Preamble. This is a conspiracy to destroy Baba Saheb’s Constitution, which the RSS-BJP has always been hatching,” the Congress post read.

Reacting to it, Tuhin Sinha told IANS: “The way the Congress is attacking the BJP and making baseless allegations that we have weakened the foundations of democracy is laughable. It is like the thief scolding the police officer. This is exactly what Congress is doing today.”

Sinha reminded that it was under former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s leadership that the country saw the darkest period for constitutional values during the Emergency in 1975, which, he argued, paved the way for a series of deeply problematic constitutional amendments.

“When former PM Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency in 1975, five terrible constitutional amendments followed. The 38th Constitutional Amendment was brought in August 1975, making it impossible to challenge the Emergency in court. The 39th Amendment prevented the Prime Minister’s election from being challenged. In the headline in The Times of India from December 1975, Indira Gandhi openly said she would bring even bigger basic changes to the Constitution,” he said.

He further alleged that Congress has always harboured an “anti-constitutional” attitude despite its claims.

“You can see how Congress consistently opposed constitutional values. One year after Indira Gandhi’s statement in December 1975, the 42nd Constitutional Amendment was introduced in December 1976. It is widely known as the ‘mini-Constitution’ because of the sweeping changes it introduced. The words ‘socialism’ and ‘secularism’ were inserted in the Preamble. But even worse was the provision that any legislation passed by Parliament would be placed beyond judicial review. The court could not rule on such laws. This was a planned and systematic assault on our Constitution that ran from August 1975 to December 1976. Given this history, I don’t think Congress has any moral right to criticise us today,” Sinha told IANS.

The BJP spokesperson argued that the Congress still refuses to acknowledge its mistakes from the Emergency era and has never apologised for them.

“Even today, the Congress party is not ashamed of those actions. It has never apologised for them. People need to understand that when our Constitution was adopted in 1950, the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ were deliberately not included in the Preamble. Why? Because our founding father, BR Ambedkar, who chaired the drafting committee, was a farsighted leader. He understood that Articles 25 to 28 of the Constitution already guaranteed secularism. Similarly, Articles 38 and 39 protected the values of socialism. That is why these words were not considered necessary in the Preamble initially,” he explained.

Sinha concluded by reiterating his demand for a formal apology.

“The way these two words were inserted during the Emergency was a misfortune for this country. Even today, the Congress needs to apologise to the nation for the 42nd Constitutional Amendment,” he remarked.

–IANS

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