Debate: Is India facing an emergency-like situation?

On Saturday, social media users were busy debating if India is facing an emergency-like situation in the wake of a day-long ban imposed on a Hindi TV channel.

New Delhi, Nov 5: In the last 72 hours, India witnessed two episodes--where voices of dissent faced stiff censorship from the Narendra Modi-led government.

First, when the leaders of opposition parties like Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal went to meet the family members of a retired soldier, who committed suicide over OROP, were detained by the Delhi Police.

Thereafter, the news of a day-long ban by the government on the television news channel NDTV India over its Pathankot attack coverage shocked everyone.

In both these episodes, opposition political leaders and members of journalism fraternity stood together to raise their voices against suppression of "freedom of expression".

Those who opposed the government's attempts to stifle voices of dissent called it "shocking and authoritarian" and reminiscent of Emergency days.

On Saturday, the hashtag--Emergency--was trending on the micro-blogging site Twitter. Here we bring you few tweets:

Firmly worded Editors' Guild condemnation of ban on NDTVIndia. Correct to call it censorship, compare with Emergency pic.twitter.com/FDUU5myIBQ

— Shekhar Gupta (@ShekharGupta) November 4, 2016

Brilliant,must read piece by @pbmehta on Modi gov creating every condition characterising emergency w/o declaring ithttps://t.co/ipxDrcIy4F

— Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) November 5, 2016

Outstanding DO Read & THINK.
As only Pratap Mehta can: There is no Emergency https://t.co/B1mrVYE38G via @IndianExpress

— Abhinandan Sekhri (@AbhinandanSekhr) November 5, 2016

NDTV India ban: #ModiGovt shows Emergency is just one way to curb dissent. #NDTVBanned @KapilSibal @ahmedpatel @INCIndia

— Kapil Sibal-Team 💿 (@KapilSibalteam) November 5, 2016

Those Using the term " Emergency " so Casually- Do not Have any Knowledge of -What "Emergency" imposed by #Pappu 'a Grandmother was 🤔!!

— Intolerant_Bull (@loosebool) November 5, 2016

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