I can never forget June 1975: Advani

Stoking a fresh controversy days after Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi snubbed India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader LK Advani on Thursday tore into Indira Gandhi's legacy of imposing the Emergency in June 1975.

Speaking at the launch of a book titled History on a Banner by eminent jurist and former Mumbai Mayor Nana Chudasama, Advani said he could never forget the month of June 1975 when "Ms Gandhi" imposed the Emergency on the nation.

The senior BJP leader was talking the context of Nana Chudasama, who had then displayed a banner outside his residence in the posh South Mumbai locality criticising the Indira's decision.

Modi had, on June 5 at a convention of chief ministers of BJP-ruled states in Maharashtra, said: "Jawaharlal Nehru was said to be very fond of kids and his birthday has been christened as Children's Day. Kids called him 'Nehru Chacha' and it brings images of a benevolent Nehru flooding our minds. But what good has it done to the kids?"

Advani, without naming Indira, said that the Emergency was one of the bleakest moments of post-independent India.

In the course of his speech, the BJP leader slipped out a paper that detailed how a magazine named Shankar's Weekly folded up to protest imposition of the Emergency despite not being among being among the political magazines that had 'rubbed Prime Minister Indira Gandhi the wrong way'.

Earlier, Reliance Industries Limited Chairman Mukesh Ambani observed that Chudasama should, in fact, receive royalty from Twitter as he was the one who invented the art of articulating the nation's feeling in 140 words. Social communicator Shobha De expressed similar thoughts.