New Delhi: The Emergency is one of the darkest periods in the history of Independent India when fundamental rights in the country were thrown out of the window with its imposition. It lasted for 21 months from 1975 to 1977 and was declared on the urgency of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who cited internal and external threats to the country. Once President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed officially declared the state of Emergency under Article 352 of the Constitution, India entered a phase which it had not witnessed before then and even after in the post-1947 era.
The Prelude to the Emergency
On January 24, 1966, Indira Gandhi became the PM of India and went on to become the most powerful person in the country, eclipsing every other politician. She swept aside all the oppositions, even within the Congress, and won in the 1971 Lok Sabha elections. But a politician named Raj Narain, whom Indira defeated in the 1971 elections, filed cases of election fraud against her in the Allahabad High Court. In a first, the PM of India was also cross-examined in the High Court.
On June 12, 1975, the Allahabad High Court’s Justice Jagmohanlal Sinha found Indira guilty of misusing government machinery for her election campaign and declared her election null and void. Also, she was banned for six years from contesting any election. Indira challenged the decision in the Supreme Court but the apex court upheld the decision.
The Emergency in India
On June 25, PM Gandhi asked President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed to declare a state of Emergency. Within three hours, all major newspapers stopped getting electricity and every major opposition leader was arrested. The Union Cabinet was not informed about this, and only learnt of it in the next morning and ratified it.
The government passed several harsh laws ahead of the Emergency including the Maintenance of Internal Security Act in 1971 and also renewed the Defence of India rules withdrawn in 1967. The government cited threats to national security as the reason for imposing the Emergency. Elections were cancelled, civil liberties were suspended, most of the politicians in the opposition were imprisoned and the press was censored. Indira’s son Sanjay Gandhi spearheaded a mass campaign for vasectomy during this phase. The state of Emergency came to an end on March 21, 1977, and in the following Lok Sabha elections, Indira Gandhi and her son were routed by the opposition.
On January 24, 1966, Indira Gandhi became the PM of India and went on to become the most powerful person in the country, eclipsing every other politician. knowledge Knowledge News, Photos and Videos on General Knowledge
