Union Health Minister J. P. Nadda on Thursday, 25 June 2026, marked Samvidhan Hatya Diwas by condemning the mass sterilisation drive carried out during the Emergency (1975–77), stating that 1 crore 10 lakh people were forcibly sterilised and that the figure exceeded the entire population of Greece at that time. He held the Congress directly responsible, calling the campaign an assault on humanity.

Context

Nadda wrote in Hindi: 'आपातकाल के दौरान 1 करोड़ 10 लाख लोगों की जबरिया नसबंदी की गई' ['During the Emergency, 1 crore 10 lakh people were subjected to forced sterilisation']. He added that when doctors arrived in villages, young men were forced to flee their homes to escape the drive. The post carried the hashtag #SamvidhanHatyaDiwas, the BJP-designated name for 25 June — the date in 1975 when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency, suspending civil liberties and democratic processes for 21 months.

Policy Backdrop

India's family planning programme, launched under the First Five-Year Plan in 1951, was transformed during the Emergency into a coercive machinery. The 1976 National Population Policy set sterilisation targets and tied them to government benefits, promotions, and access to public services, creating institutional pressure on officials to meet quotas. Sanjay Gandhi, son of the Prime Minister and a dominant informal power centre during the period, actively supervised and promoted the sterilisation campaign, particularly targeting rural and low-income populations.

After the Emergency ended and the Janata Party came to power in 1977, the government formally renounced coercive population control methods and restored the programme to a voluntary basis. The episode remains one of the most cited examples of state overreach in independent India's history.

Stakeholders and Impact

The communities most affected were rural populations, particularly young men in villages, who according to contemporary accounts fled their homes when government medical teams arrived. The psychological and social disruption in affected communities has been documented in oral histories and judicial inquiries from the post-Emergency period. For the BJP, the annual observance of Samvidhan Hatya Diwas serves as both a historical reckoning and a political contrast — positioning the party as a defender of constitutional rights against what it describes as Congress's authoritarian legacy. The Congress has historically argued that the Emergency's population measures, while extreme, were driven by developmental pressures, a position the BJP consistently contests.

What's Next

The 25 June observance typically draws a cycle of statements and counter-statements from across the political spectrum, and 2026 is unlikely to be different. Parliamentary references to the Emergency era and its family-welfare abuses have been a recurring feature of budget and health-policy debates. Analysts will watch whether Nadda, in his dual role as BJP national president and Union Health Minister, follows the statement with any formal policy or parliamentary initiative — such as a revised framing of India's current voluntary family-planning guidelines — that draws a legislative contrast with the 1976 policy.