Syllabus
- Prelims & Mains – Polity,Post Independent India
Context: On June 25th, India entered the fiftieth year of the imposition of the Emergency, an extraordinary 21-month period from 1975 to 1977, which saw the suspension of civil liberties, curtailment of press freedom, mass arrests, the cancellation of elections, and rule by decree.
Background:-
- The Emergency refers to the period from June 25, 1975 to March 21, 1977, during which Indira Gandhi government used special provisions in the Constitution to impose sweeping executive and legislative consequences on the country.
Key takeaways
- The declaration of Emergency converts the federal structure into a de facto unitary one, as the Union acquires the right to give any direction to state governments, which, though not suspended, come under the complete control of the Centre.
- Parliament may by law extend the (five-year) term of Lok Sabha one year at a time, make laws on subjects in the State List, and extend the Union’s executive powers to the states.
- Under Article 352 of the Constitution, the President may, on the advice of the Council of Ministers headed by the Prime Minister, issue a proclamation of emergency if the security of India or any part of the country is threatened by “war or external aggression or armed rebellion”. In 1975, instead of armed rebellion, the ground of “internal disturbance” was available to the government to proclaim an emergency.
- This was the only instance of proclamation of emergency due to “internal disturbance”. The two occasions in which an emergency was proclaimed earlier, on October 26, 1962, and December 3, 1971, were both on grounds of war.
- This ground of “internal disturbance” was removed by The Constitution (Forty-fourth Amendment) Act, 1978 by the Janata government that came to power after the Emergency.
- Article 358 frees the state of all limitations imposed by Article 19 (“Right to freedom”) as soon as an emergency is imposed. Article 359 empowers the President to suspend the right of people to move court for the enforcement of their rights during an emergency.
What were the political and social circumstances in India in the months leading up to the Emergency?
- Early in 1974, a student movement called Navnirman (Regeneration) began in Gujarat against the Congress government of Chimanbhai Patel, which was seen as corrupt. As the protests became violent, Patel had to resign and President’s Rule was imposed.
- Navnirman inspired a students’ movement in Bihar against corruption and poor governance, and the ABVP and socialist organisations came together to form the Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti.
- The students asked Jayaprakash Narayan, a Gandhian and hero of the Quit India Movement, to lead them. He agreed with two conditions — that the movement would be non-violent and pan-Indian, and aim to cleanse the country of corruption and misgovernance. Thereafter, the students’ movement came to be called the “JP movement”.
- Meanwhile, in May 1974, the socialist leader George Fernandes led an unprecedented strike of railway workers that paralysed the Indian Railways for three weeks.
- On June 5, during a speech in Patna’s historic Gandhi Maidan, JP gave a call for “Sampoorna Kranti”, or total revolution. By the end of the year, JP had got letters of support from across India, and he convened a meeting of opposition parties in Delhi.
- JP’s rallies invoked the power of the people with the rousing slogan, “Sinhasan khaali karo, ke janata aati hai (Vacate the throne, for the people are coming)”.
- On June 12, 1975, Justice Jagmohanlal Sinha of Allahabad High Court delivered a historic verdict in a petition filed by Raj Narain, convicting Indira Gandhi of electoral malpractice, and striking down her election from Rae Bareli. On appeal, the Supreme Court gave the Prime Minister partial relief — she could attend Parliament but could not vote.
- As demands for her resignation became louder and her aides in the Congress dug in their heels, JP asked the police not to follow immoral orders.
- Late on June 25 evening, President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed signed the proclamation of Emergency. The Cabinet was informed about the decision the next morning.
What happened to opposition leaders, mediapersons, and political dissenters during the Emergency?
- Almost all opposition leaders, including JP, were detained. About 36,000 people were put in jail under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA).
- Newspapers were subjected to pre-censorship. UNI and PTI were merged into a state-controlled agency called Samachar. The Press Council was abolished.
- Indira’s son Sanjay Gandhi pushed a “five-point programme” that included forced family planning and clearance of slums.
What legal changes were pushed through by Parliament and in the courts during the Emergency?
- With the opposition in jail, Parliament passed The Constitution (Thirty-eighth Amendment) Act that barred judicial review of the Emergency, and The Constitution (Thirty-ninth Amendment) Act that said the election of the Prime Minister could not be challenged in the Supreme Court.
- The Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act made changes to a range of laws, taking away the judiciary’s right to hear election petitions, widening the authority of the Union to encroach on State subjects, gave Parliament unbridled power to amend the Constitution with no judicial review possible, and made any law passed by Parliament to implement any or all directive principles of state policy immune to judicial review.
- In the famous case of ADM Jabalpur vs Shivkant Shukla, 1976, a five-judge Bench of the Supreme Court ruled that detention without trial was legal during an emergency. The sole dissenter to the majority judgment was Justice H R Khanna.
What prompted Indira Gandhi to lift the Emergency, and what happened afterward?
- For no apparent reason, Indira decided to lift the Emergency early in 1977.
- As it happened, the elections of 1977 led to a comprehensive defeat for Indira. The Janata Party, formed by a merger of the Jana Sangh, Congress (O), the socialists and Bharatiya Lok Dal, emerged as a formidable force, and Morarji Desai became India’s first non-Congress Prime Minister.
What efforts were made by the Janata government to undo the damage caused by the Emergency?
- The Janata government reversed many of the constitutional changes effected by the 42nd Amendment Act of 1976. It did not do away with the provision of the emergency, but made it extremely difficult to impose for the future. It made judicial review of a proclamation of emergency possible again, and mandated that every proclamation of emergency be laid before both Houses of Parliament within a month of the proclamation. Unless it was approved by both Houses by a special majority, the proclamation would lapse.
- The 44th Amendment removed “internal disturbance” as a ground for the imposition of an emergency, meaning that armed rebellion alone would now be a ground, apart from war and external aggression.
- The Shah Commission, constituted by the Janata government to report on the imposition of the Emergency and its adverse effects, submitted a damning report that found the decision to be unilateral, and adversely affecting civil liberties.
How did the Emergency change Indian politics?
- The Janata experiment gave India its first non-Congress government, but its collapse also demonstrated the limits of anti-Congressism.
- The Emergency gave India a crop of young leaders who would dominate politics for decades to come — Lalu Prasad Yadav, George Fernandes, Arun Jaitley, Ram Vilas Paswan, and many others.
- The post-Emergency Parliament saw the coming together of the social forces behind the Jana Sangh and the socialists — Hindutva upper caste, and the Lohiaite agrarian and artisanal castes — and increased the representation of OBCs in Parliament.
- The Janata government appointed the Mandal Commission to look into OBC quotas, which would go on to make the rise of the OBCs in North India irreversible.
Source: Indian Express
