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The emergency that was declared in the early hours of June 26, 1975 was a severe setback in the political evolution of India … Citizens were deprived of their fundamental rights; freedom of the press was curbed … political dissent was suppressed … and officialdom assumed arbitrary powers … In sum, these events changed the basic relationship between the citizen and the state and indeed threatened to change the character of the Indian state itself.

—P. N. Dhar, Indira Gandhi, the Emergency and Indian Democracy

The emergency, which lasted for 19 months between 26 June 1975 and 24 March 1977, has been the subject of many books. Most of them are accounts by persons who, in their own way, resisted the undemocratic ways that marked the 19 months. There are also accounts explaining the conditions that led to the declaration of the emergency and the events of that period. The point being that the

Emergency marked an important watershed in the evolution of democratic practice in India, most of the published works are either in the nature of holding a brief for Indira Gandhi or accounts that present her as an autocrat personified. There may be truth in all this. In this chapter we shall present the developments as they happened and in their context.

The Emergency, nevertheless, was a development that the democratic polity in India could have done without. It was also an experience where it was revealed that the Republican Constitution itself provided the scope for an undemocratic shift. The Emergency was as much a constitutional response by Indira Gandhi to the constitutional means as the opposition parties had adopted, to unseat her. In other words, the emergency was an experience that brought out, with ample clarity, that the

Constitution contained provisions in it that could both enhance the democratic rights of the people and be used to deny even the fundamental rights to its people.

The very fact that Article 352 of the Constitution, which enabled Indira Gandhi to deny to the citizens some of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the same Constitution, continues to be there in the statute should convey that a similar resort is possible even in future. It is another matter that the Article was amended by the Janata Party Government, adding an explicit clause that a

recommendation to impose internal emergency will have to be made by the Union Cabinet to the President of the Republic in writing. One of the provisions of the Constitution’s 44th Amendment is that an internal emergency can be declared only after the Union Cabinet approves a resolution and the entire process in the cabinet is recorded in writing and sent to the President. Indira Gandhi could get the President to promulgate an internal emergency without such formalities late in the night on 25 June 1975. The nation can no longer be pushed into an undemocratic mode with such secrecy and speed at which Indira Gandhi managed it on that fateful night. Similarly, the Constitution now stands amended by which the phrase ‘internal disturbance’ has been replaced by ‘armed rebellion’.

The other important aspect, that needs to be underscored, is that the Emergency was the fallout of a whole lot of causes, some of them were longstanding and others immediate. The long-term dynamics

that led to the emergency can be traced to the various developments involving the Congress party, such as the erosion of its support base over the years after independence, and its manifestation in the 1967 general elections, the Congress revival of sorts under Indira Gandhi in the 1971 polls, the agitations against the Indira regime such as the Gujarat movement, the Bihar movement and the railway strike in May 1974. These have been discussed in the past few chapters. The immediate cause for the emergency came with the Allahabad High Court judgment, setting aside Indira Gandhi’s election to the Lok Sabha from Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh, on 12 June 1975.

On that day, Justice Jagmohan Lal Sinha of the Allahabad High Court pronounced that Indira Gandhi had resorted to corrupt electoral practices, as defined in the Representation of the People’s Act, 1951, and, hence, her election was null and void. He also allowed three weeks’ time for Indira Gandhi to prefer an appeal in the Supreme Court. This meant that the verdict would take effect only if an appeal was not filed or not sustained in the Supreme Court. Indira Gandhi did prefer an appeal.

But to her dismay, Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer, the vacation judge of the Supreme Court, refused an absolute stay. This turned out to be the immediate cause for the emergency.

After a narrative on the events that took place immediately after the Presidential promulgation on the night of 25 June 1975, such as the indiscriminate arrests and the imposition of press censorship, we will deal with the institutional changes effected by the Emergency regime including the 42nd Constitution Amendment; thereafter, a narrative on what is described, by a section of political commentators, as the excesses and this will include the ways and means of Sanjay Gandhi; the next section will narrate the various kinds of resistance to the emergency. While an attempt will be made to cover the various acts of resistance, let it be stated that this will not be a complete account of those. A complete account on the resistance to the Emergency will perhaps have to wait for another book.

The Midnight Proclamation and the Clampdown

The significance of 12 June 1975 was that it was on that day that Indira Gandhi received two bad messages. One was the news from Ahmedabad. The Congress party lost to the Janata Morcha, a pre-poll combination of the Congress (O), the Jan Sangh, the Bharatiya Lok Dal and the Socialist Party.

Polling was held on 10 June 1975 for the 182 assembly constituencies and the final tally was 87 for the Janata Morcha (of which Morarji was the supreme leader) and 75 for Indira’s Congress party. As many as 20 independents were elected and a majority of them were known supporters of the Janata Morcha. It was a bad news, given the long history behind the mid-term elections in Gujarat

(discussed in the previous chapter), and also because Indira herself had led the campaign for her Congress in the state. The second and more important (rather decisive) event on that day was the judgment delivered by Justice Sinha. Even if it was on an innocuous election petition, filed by Raj Narain who had lost to Indira Gandhi in March 1971 from Rae Bareli, the judgment had far-reaching implications.

It was innocuous because elections petitions are not unusual and Raj Narain, a member of the Socialist Party, was a compulsive litigant. Indira Gandhi’s victory margin in Rae Bareli was mighty.

She had secured 1,83,309 votes while her nearest rival Raj Narain of the Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP) managed only 71,499 votes. Indira Gandhi’s victory margin was 1,11,810. The Congress party was opposed by a four-party opposition front and the SSP was part of it. Indira’s Congress had

registered an emphatic victory in the 1971 elections from all over India. It may be recalled that the 1971 polls gave Indira Gandhi’s Congress party a landslide win against the combined opposition. In Uttar Pradesh alone, the Congress party’s strength went up from 47 in 1967 to 73 in 1971. In a sense, there was no way Raj Narain could have hoped to win against Indira Gandhi from Rae Bareli in 1971. Indira had won this constituency in 1967 (her first ever electoral battle) securing 55 per cent of the votes polled and in 1971, she had secured more than 66 per cent of the votes polled. But then, Raj Narain’s contention, before the Allahabad High Court, was not based on any irregularities at the time of counting. He had challenged Indira Gandhi’s election from Rae Bareli on the ground that by

employing Yashpal Kapoor as her election agent and this violated the provisions of the Representation of the People’s Act, 1951.

Kapoor was the prime minister’s private secretary and was drawing his salary from the

Consolidated Funds of the Government of India and hence qualified to be a government servant. The Representation of the People’s Act, 1951, laid out that government servants shall not be involved in electioneering. And in the event any candidate did that, it was held as corrupt electoral practice. In this instance, Kapoor had accepted to be Indira Gandhi’s election agent in Rae Bareli on 7 January 1971. However, he submitted his letter of resignation from Government service only on 13 January 1971. In other words, he had remained in service for a week after he accepted the appointment as Indira Gandhi’s election agent. Moreover, in the eyes of the Allahabad High Court, Kapoor had to be treated as having done Indira Gandhi’s election related work from 29 December 1970, the day on which she announced early elections to the Lok Sabha and her candidature.

Apart from this, there was a time lag between the submission of his letter of resignation and the order relieving him of his duties which was issued on 25 January 1971. Kapoor did not find it necessary to wait until his formal separation from the government service before taking over as the election agent. This clearly meant that he continued to be a government officer even while performing the duties as Indira Gandhi’s election agent. This was not all. Raj Narain had also submitted evidence that the rostrum on which Indira Gandhi had addressed her election rallies, across Uttar Pradesh were built by the Public Works Department of the Uttar Pradesh government. This again was a corrupt electoral practice, in the eyes of the law.

All these were innocuous factors. None of them could have influenced the poll outcome and

particularly so when Indira’s margin of victory was huge. Moreover, the landslide win registered by the Congress party too (in comparison with the 1967 elections) could not have been achieved because Kapoor happened to be her election agent in Rae Bareli or because she addressed an election rally from a rostrum that was a few inches higher than the prescribed limits. The judiciary, however, was not expected to go beyond the letter of the law. Justice Jagmohan Lal Sinha could not have gone into all these. His business was to stick to the law as such and Indira Gandhi was clearly guilty of

violations. Sinha said so on 12 June 1975 and declared Indira Gandhi’s election from Rae Bareli invalid. The Prime Minister was held guilty of violating the law during the election campaign and

hence her membership in the Lok Sabha was now declared illegal. Sinha’s judgment was based on Section 123, Clause 7 of the Representation of the People’s Act, 1951. The law also prescribed that those found guilty of corrupt electoral practices be disqualified and debarred from contesting

elections for a period of six years. And Justice Sinha’s 12 June 1975 judgment debarred Indira

Gandhi from contesting another election for a period of six years. This meant that the Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seat would fall vacant, but Indira Gandhi could not have contested the by-elections there.

Indira Gandhi’s lawyer, V. N. Khare, flown in to Allahabad from Srinagar, pleaded before Justice Sinha that he put the judgment in abeyance on the ground that some time was necessary before the Congress party addressed the issue and elected another leader. The disqualification, in this case, was that of the prime minister and some time was needed, he argued, to elect another leader and save the nation from landing in a chaos. Justice Sinha did not refuse and held that the judgment will come into effect only after 20 days. In any case, Justice Sinha would have had to grant sufficient time for the defendant to seek an appeal in the Supreme Court, as this is an accepted practice in the judicial

scheme of things. The dictum in this regard is clear: While the power to stay is discretionary, the right to appeal is statutory.

The fact is that Indira Gandhi had pleaded for time to save the nation from chaos and it was impressed upon Justice Sinha that the time will be used to elect another prime minister. This was brought up in the Supreme Court by Raj Narain when Indira Gandhi’s petition seeking a stay on the Allahabad High Court judgment came up before Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer (the vacation judge) on 24 June 1975. Justice Iyer refused to entertain the plea on grounds that ‘the judicial approach is to shy away from political thickets and view problems with institutionalized blinkers on…’ While Indira Gandhi’s plea before the Supreme Court was taken up by Nani Palkhiwala, Raj Narain was

represented by Shanthi Bhushan. The arguments and the interim orders of 24 June 1975, by Justice Krishna Iyer, granting conditional stay of the Allahabad High Court judgment, meant a lot in terms of its impact on the political developments of India. But before that, let us briefly discuss the

developments on 12 June 1975 and in the couple of intervening weeks, until 25 June 1975.

Indira Gandhi was informed by N. K. Seshan, an officer in the prime minister’s secretariat, that her election to the Lok Sabha was set aside by Justice Sinha of the Allahabad High Court and that she had been debarred from contesting elections for six years. Indira Gandhi went into a huddle with her cabinet colleagues. One option before her was to step down as the prime minister and ‘elect’ any one of her loyalists. Jagjivan Ram, Swaran Singh and Y. B. Chavan were the probable choices. But then, none of these men were bold enough to suggest this as an option. Nor did others talk about this.

Meanwhile, Indira’s son, Sanjay Gandhi, was already on the job. Along with the Haryana chief

minister, Bansi Lal (who had landed into his inner circle by arranging land for the Maruti project), R.

K. Dhawan (who had replaced Yashpal Kapoor as Indira’s private secretary) and Om Mehta (Minister of State for Home), Sanjay was working on other plans.

The word was out that all those who sought Indira’s resignation, on moral grounds, were acting on behalf of forces that were determined to destabilise India. Indira Gandhi herself had begun to say, even before the Allahabad High Court verdict was pronounced, that she was high on the hit list of the US administration and that she could face the same fate as Salvador Allende of Chile. She was

referring to the CIA inspired coup against Allende in 1973 and his assasination!

Sanjay Gandhi worked at two levels. One was to ensure that all those in the Congress party, with a sense of morality or pangs of conscience (there were hardly anyone of significance in any case) kept their mouths shut. He did succeed in this. The second aspect of his strategy was to orchestrate support for Indira Gandhi on the streets. This was ensured by ferrying people from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan to participate in rallies in New Delhi. Dhawan, who had risen to be a key person in the prime minister’s secretariat from his early beginnings as a clerk in the Ministry of Railways, had issued instructions from the prime minister’s official residence to the chief ministers to this effect.

The chief ministers were men who had done this earlier in July 1969, that is, drum up support for Indira Gandhi against the party bosses. The crowds that poured into Delhi day after day between 12 June and 20 June 1975 were managed by blatant abuse of the administrative machinery, and this came to light (with abundant evidence) at the Justice Shah Commission of Enquiry set up by the Janata Party Government after the emergency was lifted.

As many as 1,761 buses, under the Delhi Transport Corporation, were commandeered by the

Congress party to ferry its supporters to rally around the prime minister’s residence between 12 June 1975 and 25 June 1975. This was in addition to the fleet belonging to the Haryana State Roadways and the number of trains, in which Indira’s supporters could travel from as far away as Gorakhpur and Varanasi (in eastern Uttar Pradesh) to New Delhi, without having to pay for the fare. While crowds landing in Delhi and shouting slogans seeking Indira Gandhi to stay on, unmindful of the Allahabad High Court verdict, had become an everyday affair, the high point of this campaign was a meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party on 18 June 1975. A resolution was passed affirming Indira Gandhi’s indispensability for not just the party but to the nation. Jagjivan Ram moved the

motion and 450 members, a substantial majority of the Congress MPs drawn from both Houses, voted in its favour. There were, however, 44 votes against the motion.

After thus asserting, in a categorical manner, that the party was not going to ‘elect’ another leader (recall that an assurance to this effect was given in the Allahabad High Court on 12 June by Indira’s counsel, V. N. Khare), she held a rally at the Boat Club grounds on 20 June 1975. On that day, apart from Sanjay Gandhi, she had Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi by her side on the stage. Indira assured the crowd that she was determined to stay on and serve the nation and its people ‘till her last breath’

because that was the Nehru–Gandhi family’s tradition.

All this, in the name of democracy, based on the firm belief that unseating Indira was a conspiracy against the nation and that the nation was doomed without Indira Gandhi at the helm, was taking place when the opposition, now led by JP, was preparing for a fight to the finish. As early as on 6 March 1975, JP addressed a rally at the Boat Club grounds where he called upon the armed forces to defend Democracy and stand up against authoritarian tendencies. ‘It is the duty of the army to defend the Constitution of the country from authoritarian threats. If any party government or party leader intends to use the army as a means to further their party and power interests, it is the clear duty, to my mind, of the army not to allow it to be so used,’ JP had remarked. And he repeated this, in almost all the rallies he addressed across the country, since then. Similarly, he had trained his guns at Indira Gandhi even before the 12 June 1975 judgment. In an interview to a newsmagazine, in April 1975, JP said:

‘Mrs Gandhi is the fountainhead of all authoritarianism of the ruling Congress. She, as a single individual, can put to shame some of the greatest autocrats of history. I can see the threat to democracy personified in her.’

The Allahabad High Court verdict simply gave impetus to the combined opposition campaign, which had taken shape before the 1967 general elections. Although the unity achieved in 1967 did not last long and the various state governments, led by this combine, had collapsed within a couple of years, the 1971 elections brought them together once again in the form of the ‘Grand Alliance’. After March 1975, this alliance had consolidated itself under JP’s leadership. The Allahabad High Court verdict gave JP and the opposition parties the moral basis as well as an issue to focus upon. They

The Allahabad High Court verdict simply gave impetus to the combined opposition campaign, which had taken shape before the 1967 general elections. Although the unity achieved in 1967 did not last long and the various state governments, led by this combine, had collapsed within a couple of years, the 1971 elections brought them together once again in the form of the ‘Grand Alliance’. After March 1975, this alliance had consolidated itself under JP’s leadership. The Allahabad High Court verdict gave JP and the opposition parties the moral basis as well as an issue to focus upon. They