Accusing the BJP led Central Government for taking the country towards a “wrong path, Congress veteran and the former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh on Monday maintained that the nation's freedom could be under threat due to its actions.

“The Congress had played an important role in strengthening the country's freedom, but during the last four and a half years, the BJP laid emphasis on things which could adversely affect India's history...This can again endanger country's freedom,” said Dr Manmohan while was speaking at the re-launch of a Hindi newspaper ‘Navjivan’ that was first launched in 1919 by Mahatma Gandhi but was closed several times during the British regime.

“I want to appeal to the people that they should understand how the present government is taking the nation on a wrong path and there is a need to strongly fight against it,” he said, adding that the former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had once said that ‘Freedom is in peril, defend it with all its might’.

Earlier, Punjab Congress president Sunil Jakhar lashed out at the ruling party, and the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while batting for complete freedom to press.

“Those who spoke against the government were silenced. Enforcement Directorate(ED) is being misused to put pressure on the newspapers. Editors have also not been spared,” he said.

The weekly was launched after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) recently attacked a controversial plot allotted to Associated Journals Limited by the then Haryana's Congress government by flouting the norms. Congress leader and Associated Journals Limited chairman Motilal Vora on the occasion said that after Mahatma Gandhi was sent to jail in 1920, he had asked Jawaharlal Nehru to run the paper.