NEW DELHI: The BJP Thursday charged the Congress with nursing the same mindset that brought Emergency, saying Rahul Gandhi's protest in Bihar against the Election Commission's ongoing revision of electoral roll underscores the opposition party's belief that constitutional bodies' legitimacy depends on its poll victory or loss.

BJP national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi hit out at the opposition party over some Congress leaders' criticism of their seasoned colleague Shashi Tharoor, who has written an opinion piece denouncing the Emergency as a dark chapter in Indian democracy.

Slamming the Emergency declared in 1975, Tharoor had said people of the country responded clearly to the excesses of that period by voting Indira Gandhi out of power by a large margin.

Congress MP Manickam Tagore resumed his veiled digs on Tharoor and posted on X, "When a colleague starts repeating BJP lines word for word, you begin to wonder Is the bird becoming a parrot? Mimicry is cute in birds, not in politics."

He has been targeting the fourth-term Thiruvananthapuram MP following Tharoor's remarks and write-ups endorsing the Modi government's actions under Operation Sindoor amid the latter's growing differences with a section of party colleagues, especially from his home state, Kerala.

Asked about the issue, Trivedi told reporters that even as it has taken a Congress leader 50 years to realise the excesses of Emergency, the reaction from within the party shows that it continues to "shamelessly" support the extreme measure and justifies the mindset behind it.

The Emergency was invoked because then-prime minister Indira Gandhi's election was nullified by the judiciary, he noted, adding that the Congress decided that its expedience would guide the legitimacy of constitutional positions.

"Rahul Gandhi's remarks during the protest in Bihar display a similar mindset that the legitimacy of constitutional bodies will be subject to his poll win or loss," Trivedi said.

Generations have changed, but not the mindset, he added.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had alleged on Wednesday in Patna that the 2024 Maharashtra assembly elections were "rigged" to favour the BJP and claimed the NDA government at the Centre wants to repeat it in the Bihar polls due later this year.

He alleged that the SIR was an extension of the 'Maharashtra model' of fudging electoral rolls, accusing the Election Commission of working on instructions from the BJP.