On June 25, 1975 at Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi, when JP i.e. Jayaprakash Narayan, the father of the entire revolution, said, “This is revolution friends… and the entire revolution.” When the entire Ramlila ground stood up to support him. This idea of revolution came in the light of the decision of the Allahabad High Court regarding the parliamentary election of the then Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi.
On 12 June 1975, Judge Shriman Sinha of the Allahabad High Court delivered the verdict on a petition filed by Socialist leader Rajnarayan Tiwari. Under this decision, Indira Gandhi was banned from contesting any legislative, i.e. parliamentary and assembly elections for the next 6 years. There was a case against him that during the Lok Sabha elections held in 1971, he committed various kinds of disturbances to win his parliamentary constituency Rae Bareli. These irregularities included getting Swami Awaitanand to be a candidate by paying 50 thousand rupees, asking the District Magistrate and Captain for improper work and distributing liquor and money to the voters etc.
After this decision of Allahabad High Court, the entire opposition united against Indira Gandhi. Protests started against him across the country. JP was to come to Delhi on June 22 in the course of the protests against Indira Gandhi. But at the last moment his plane was not allowed to fly. After this, Jaiprakash Narayan reaches Delhi on 23 June. Meanwhile, the decision of the petition filed by Indira Gandhi against the Allahabad High Court also comes on 25 June 1975. Under this decision, the court order given against Indira Gandhi was conditionally postponed. In addition, Indira Gandhi was denied the right to vote.
Indira Gandhi was seeing the future of her politics being ruined by this order of the court. Here, Jayaprakash Narayan had also appealed to Ramlila Maidan (New Delhi) on June 25, 1975, that all of you should non-cooperation with the Indira government. Seeing the deteriorating atmosphere against her, Indira Gandhi met the then President Fakhruddin Ahmed late at night and prepared him for the idea that he should declare a national emergency in the country with immediate effect. After this, the President also imposed a national emergency in the country.
On the next day, Indira Gandhi made this announcement from All India Radio-
Dear all Citizen of The India, the President has declared a state of emergency. There is no reason to panic about it.
After this recommendation of the President, the polity of the country changed from democratic to dictatorial nature. The Indira government was constantly blowing the life of democracy with its different decisions. The rates of advertisements received by the government’s sycophantic media-newspaper institutions were increased. The editors of the newspaper who wrote news against the then Prime Minister were put in jail.
In this national emergency imposed on the entire nation under Article 352, the ‘right to life’ provided under Article 21, as well as ‘right to equality before law’ provided under Article 14, were also taken away from the common citizens.
But how long can a living and vast democracy be imprisoned under the bars of totalitarianism?
The National Emergency is declared to end on 21 March 1977, almost 21 months after the Emergency came into force. Apart from this, all the restrictions that were imposed on the common citizens, newspapers and other private institutions during the Emergency also come to an end.
