Speaking about the Emergency during a conversation with economist Kaushik Basu from the Cornell University in the US, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on Tuesday that it was a "mistake". "I think that (Emergency) was a mistake. Absolutely, that was a mistake. And my grandmother (Indira Gandhi) said as much," Rahul Gandhi told Bose, who had served as the chief economic advisor to India.

While attacking the current dispensation saying that "there is a fundamental difference between what happened during the Emergency, which 'was wrong', and what is happening in the country now", Rahul Gandhi said the Congress, at no point, attempted to capture India's constitutional framework. "Our design does not allow us that. Even if we want to do it, we can't," he said.