The Emergency, 1975–77

On the night of 25 June 1975, President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed proclaimed a national Emergency under Article 352, on the advice of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, on the ground of internal disturbance. It lasted 21 months, until 21 March 1977, and it remains the only Emergency declared on that ground. Its immediate trigger was the Allahabad High Court judgment of 12 June 1975, in which Justice Jagmohanlal Sinha found Indira Gandhi guilty of electoral malpractice and set aside her election to the Lok Sabha; combined with the mass movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan, the government claimed the country's stability was threatened.

During the Emergency, civil liberties were curtailed on a large scale. Opposition leaders were arrested under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA), press censorship was imposed, elections were postponed, and the right to move courts for the enforcement of fundamental rights was suspended. The 42nd Constitutional Amendment, 1976, often called the mini-Constitution, expanded executive and central power, curtailed judicial review, and added the words socialist, secular and integrity to the Preamble. A compulsory sterilisation drive and slum clearances in Delhi became symbols of the period's excesses. In ADM Jabalpur v. Shivkant Shukla (1976), the habeas corpus case, the Supreme Court held by a majority that even the right to life could be suspended during Emergency; Justice H. R. Khanna's dissent is now celebrated as a landmark defence of liberty, and the majority view was later overruled in K. S. Puttaswamy (2017).

The Emergency ended through an election. In March 1977 Indira Gandhi called elections, and the Congress lost decisively to the Janata Party, the first time the Congress had been voted out at the Centre. The Janata government appointed the Shah Commission to inquire into Emergency excesses, and the 44th Constitutional Amendment, 1978, rewrote the safeguards: internal disturbance was replaced by armed rebellion as a ground for Emergency, the President must act on the written advice of the Cabinet, and Articles 20 and 21 — protection in conviction for offences, and life and personal liberty — can never be suspended.

The Emergency matters because it tested whether India's democracy could survive its own Constitution's emergency provisions. It survived, but the test left lessons: that constitutional text alone does not protect liberty, that courts, press and opposition matter most when they are under pressure, and that voters, given a free election, can reverse even a government that has concentrated power. Those lessons are why the Emergency remains a reference point in every debate about executive power in India.