Arjun faces attack from party, over Emergency this time

Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh has come under fresh attack from within the party with senior Congress leader Vidya Charan Shukla...

Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh has come under fresh attack from within the party with senior Congress leader Vidya Charan Shukla, the powerful Information and Broadcasting Minister in Indira Gandhi Cabinet during the Emergency, questioning his much-publicised claim that he had opposed the Emergency.

“AICC spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi had put it absolutely correctly. He (Arjun Singh) hardly had any line in Delhi. He was working in the state then,” Shukla, who was called the “Emergency Minister”, told The Sunday Express on the phone from Chhattisgarh on Friday.

After Singh stated that he had differed with Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi over the Emergency, Singhvi had countered it during a press conference at AICC headquarters, saying the Congress did not recollect that Singh ever came out in opposition to the Emergency in the past 30 years. With Shukla lending credence to the Congress’ official line on this issue, there were few takers for Singh’s claim that he had conveyed his opposition to Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi privately.

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However, Singh told The Sunday Express: “I don’t want to get into this. It was only with Indiraji and Sanjayji. What can I do if they (Congressmen) don’t know about it?”

The HRD Minister also said he was not “isolated” in the party, even though Congress President Sonia Gandhi was yet to broach any discussion with him on the controversy surrounding his remarks questioning the decision-making process in the party. “I don’t feel isolated at all. If some people feel happy about it (criticising him) let them do that,” he said.

In the run-up to the 2004 parliamentary election, Congress President Sonia Gandhi had told The SundayExpress Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta on NDTV’s Walk the Talk programme that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had thought that Emergency was a “mistake”. “Well, there is no way we can say that the Emergency was right,” she had said.

Congress leaders believed that Arjun’s remarks might be “his way” of conveying “like-mindedness” on the Emergency to Sonia.

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Senior Congress leaders vehemently contested the HRD Minister’s claims about his role during the Emergency. A senior Congress leader from Madhya Pradesh said Arjun Singh was Education Minister in PC Sethi Government when the Emergency was imposed.

“Arjun Singh was all praise for the Emergency then. Check out the records, the local press clippings, he was eulogising 20 Point Programme. But when SC Shukla replaced PC Sethi as Chief Minister in December 1975, if I remember it right, he dropped Arjun Singh from the Cabinet. I don’t know if Singh started opposing the Emergency after being dropped. Even if he had, it had to be at the local level. Nothing was heard at the national level. Anyway, Singh won the Assembly election post-Emergency, even though most stalwarts had lost,” said the senior Congressman.

A senior Congress leader, who was in Rajya Sabha then, said, “Arjun Singh was too insignificant a leader then to approach Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and oppose the Emergency. At least, I don’t remember it.”