The Bihar government’s official website has said that freedom fighter Jayaprakash Narayan was treated worse during Indira Gandhi’s rule than during British rule. Narayan, also called JP, was lodged in Tihar Jail during the Emergency. The Congress, which is part of the coalition heading Bihar, will reportedly take up the matter with the state government. The website also called the former Prime Minister’s rule autocratic, reported The Times of India.

Chandan Yadav, Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee member in charge of media relations, told The Times of India that such references to Indira Gandhi are unacceptable, and that she was a popular and well-respected leader. BPCC spokesperson Harkhu Jha said that today communalism is a bigger threat than anything else, and that the Congress stood by whatever Gandhi did during the Emergency period.

The website reads: “It was he [JP] who steadfastly and staunchly opposed the 'autocratic rule' of Indira Gandhi and her younger son Sanjay Gandhi. Fearing people's reaction to his opposition, Indira Gandhi had him arrested on the eve of declaring Emergency beginning June 26, 1975. He was put in the Tihar Jail, located near Delhi, where notorious criminals are jailed... Thus, in Free India, this septuagenarian, who had fought for India's freedom alongside Indira Gandhi's father Jawaharlal Nehru, received a treatment that was worse than what the British had meted out to Gandhiji in Champaran in 1917, for his speaking out against oppression.”