National Emergency was imposed on the country on June 25, 1975, 28 years after independence. The Indira Gandhi government had put the entire opposition in jail. Action was taken on 25000 people under MISA i.e. Internal Security Act. Apart from this, more than 1 lakh people were imprisoned without trial. This emergency was imposed on the country in the name of internal disturbance under Article 352. The Indira government imposed this emergency because on June 12, 1975, the Allahabad High Court in one of its decisions banned Indira Gandhi from contesting elections for the next six years. When Indira filed a petition in the Supreme Court against this decision, the Honorable Court denied her the right to vote.
In this way, when Indira was left with no way to save her power, she imposed a national emergency. Under this emergency, various fundamental rights granted to the public were suspended. Even the right to equality before the law provided under Article 14 and the right to life provided under Article 21 was suspended.
India was now transformed from a constitutional state into a police state. Now the government was running not under the constitution but under the orders of Indira. All the leaders of the opposition were arrested at the behest of the Indira government. Whoever raised his voice against Indira Sarkar would have been thrown in jail.
A kind of censorship was imposed on the media, the fourth pillar of democracy. Any newspaper that showed news against Indira or had such apprehension, her owner and editor would have been put in jail or the electricity of her institution would be cut off.
The rule of law was over in the country. Anyone was being arrested on the ground that he could not obey the orders of the government. The government was easily passing any law of its own convenience and of its own thinking… Most of these laws passed without any debate did not represent the public interest in any way. This is the reason that when the new government was later formed under the Prime Ministerial leadership of Morarji Desai, he either repealed or amended most of these laws.
Along with this, elections were not held in the meantime, which is most important for a healthy democracy. In this way, this emergency throttled democracy in every way. This type of incident should not be repeated in a democracy. For this, the Indian system of governance will have to operate according to the basic spirit of the Constitution. The various pillars of democracy have to function within their jurisdiction under the principle of separation of power. Apart from this, the fairness of the media, air freedom will also have to be maintained so that Indian democracy continues to flow with this vitality.