DW BUREAU / Chandigarh

Haryana Governor Bandaru Dattatreya, while refreshing the memories of Emergency in the country on June 25, 1975, said that when on the morning of June 26, people came to know that Emergency has been imposed in the country by the government, there was chaos in the whole country. He said that during that time I was a Pracharak of RSS. Many people were arrested in the name of Emergency, big leaders like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Morarji Desai, Lal Krishna Advani, George Fernandes and many other leaders were arrested under Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) .

He told that on 26th June when I went out for a tour in the morning, I found that the police were coming to search our office, I left from there but I did not know where to go. If I went to the house of any Sangh worker, there too the police had put surveillance. In such a situation, I got the information that all the people will have to work underground. So I decided that instead of wearing kurta pajama, I will wear pant-shirt, then I immediately wore the pant-shirt of a lawyer named Bhupak Reddy and went to another state. After going there, I came to know that the leaders have been arrested in the whole country. Censorship has been imposed in the whole country, no one could give any other news except the government in TV and newspaper. The whole country was tied up like a prison.

He told that in normal circumstances, we used to go from village to village and work for organisation building. Then we identified some places where I started living after changing my name. I changed my name to Shailendra. Due to censorship, there was no correct news in newspapers or TV. We could not find out what was happening in the country and the state. Therefore, a movement was started in the name of Lok Sangharsh Samiti.

Under the leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan, we used to receive Hyderabad news from Delhi. A circular used to come from Delhi, which had to be printed and sent to all the states and to all the workers and also to the social workers. During this time, I was arrested and put in Chanchalguda jail of Adilabad district of Andhra Pradesh. In the jail, I was repeatedly asked how and from where do you get this bulletin, who sends it and where does the money for it come from.
(editor@dailyworld.in)