Hours after Akhilesh Yadav asked Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar to ‘quit’ the BJP-led ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), KC Tyagi, a senior member of the Kumar-led Janata Dal (United) on Friday responded saying it is Yadav who should call off his alliance with the Congress because of what happened during the Emergency.

Yadav made the remark while addressing the workers of his Samajwadi Party outside his residence in Lucknow after he was stopped by the Uttar Pradesh Police from visiting the memorial of Jai Prakash Narayan on the national icon’s 122nd birth anniversary.

“The movement led by Jai Prakash Narayan was against the ‘dictatorship’ of the Congress. Emergency was imposed on June 25 (1975). There was no freedom of expression. Akhilesh Yadav’s remark is inappropriate…I want to remind him both his father (Mulayam Singh Yadav) and Nitish Kumar were jailed during the Emergency. He should end his partnership with a party that curtailed people’s freedom and violated all democratic norms,” Tyagi said, according to ABP News.

The prime minister who imposed the Emergency was Indira Gandhi, the grandmother of Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, the current Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha.

The Congress leads the opposition INDIA bloc nationally and Samajwadi Party is among its members. In Lok Sabha elections this year, the two combined to bag 43 (SP-37, Congress-6) out of 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP is in power, restricting the saffron party to 33 seats, down from 62 in 2019 and 71 in 2014.

Though the BJP formed its third consecutive government at the Centre, it fell short of what would have been its third successive individual majority; it formed the government with the support from its allies. Therefore, the JD(U)’s 12 Lok Sabha seats makes it a crucial ally for the BJP.