Sanjay Gandhi’s Takeover Plan

Days before the Allahabad High Court’s 12 June 1975 judgment unseating Indira Gandhi and disqualifying her for contesting elections for six years, Indira Gandhi used to hold nocturnal meetings with her younger son Sanjay Gandhi and his close confidant Bansi Lal to discuss contingency plans in the event of an adverse verdict in the case.

My sources privy to the goings-on in the PMH told me that in such meetings Indira Gandhi was presented a two-phase plan for implementation even before the announcement of Allahabad High Court’s judgement slated for June 12, 1975.

The first phase of the plan envisaged:

1. A takeover by the prime minister as President by virtue of the latter being the Supreme Commander of Armed forces.
2. Abrogation of the Constitution and suspension of fundamental rights.
3. Abolition of Supreme Court and High Courts.
4. Retention of Central and State ministries and also of Parliament and State Assemblies.

My sources informed me that the other steps that were proposed to be simultaneously taken included house arrests of the president, the Union agriculture and irrigation minister, Jagjivan Ram, the Union oil minister, K.D.Malviya and the minister for external affairs Y.B.Chavan. It was suggested that some other top-level officials, including N.K.Mukherjee, Union home secretary (who stood transferred) and P.N.Haksar (Haksar was the principal secretary to Indira Gandhi and also her confidant. He was the brains behind crucial events such as the nationalization of banks in 1969, the 1971 Indo-Soviet Friendship Treaty and the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971) be arrested. Later, Malviya’s name was stuck off from the list of the targeted persons.

Apparently the PM was not in favour of such harsh measures. She merely listened to the suggested takeover plan but did not instantly respond. However, after the Allahabad High Court’s 12 June 1975 judgememt disqualifying her from contesting elections for six years, active consideration of the takeover plan began. Mrs. Gandhi was still not inclined to take such extreme steps. But under pressure from her son and his coterie’s hard-core member Bansi Lal, she reluctantly approved the takeover plan at 2-30 pm on 25 June 1975.

The second phase of the Sanajay Gandhi’s contingency plan stipulated certain measures on the economic front:

(1) Giving of land to the tiller.
(2) Income tax exemption limit to be raised from Rs.6000 to Rs.12000.
(3) Loan redemption for the rural poor.
(4) Imposition of urban property ceiling.
(5) Delicensing of small scale industries.

Sanjay Gandhi who played a leading role in planning future strategy on economic and political fronts before and during the Emergency knew that Indira Gandhi was keen for loan redemption for the rural poor. He also emphasized at one of the nocturnal meetings (which used to be held for 2/3 hours daily) that three basic factors would have to be kept in view while deciding post-takeover policies: Vigilance against CIA; maintaining good relations with the USSR; and, at no cost should the USSR be displeased.

A significant development took place soon after the pronouncement of the judgement on June 12, 1975 by Justice Jagmohan Lal Sinha of the Allahabad High Court. (Sinha had stayed his judgement pending appeal before the Supreme Court). The Army chief T.N.Raina was taken into confidence and troop movements were to take place in anticipation of a takeover.

Duties were assigned by Sanjay Gandhi to the PM loyalists to mobilise all chief ministers in support of the PM. Some of the CMs were brought in Air Force planes. Madhya Pradesh chief minister P.C.Sethi was the first to arrive. He was followed by Bansi Lal who was in Srinagar and reached Delhi by 8-30 AM on June 13.

Proclamation of Emergency

After initially giving her consent to the takeover plan of Sanjay Gandhi on June 25 afternoon, Indira Gandhi changed her mind after a late night meeting with West Bengal Chief Minister Siddharth Shanker Ray and one of her other inner circle advisers. After she explained her reservations about the takeover plan, Ray suggested imposition of internal Emergency instead of acting on Sanjay Gandhi’s takeover plan. She agreed with the suggestion. It was perhaps her democratic instincts inherited from her father Jawahar Lal Nehru that were instrumental in her reversing her earlier decision of acting on the takeover plan, but one can never be sure.

After Indira Gandhi’s meeting with her advisers and confidants, Ray drafted a letter to the President to issue proclamation of Emergency “on the basis of information Indira Gandhi had received that there is an imminent danger to the security of India being threatened by internal disturbances and the matter is extremely urgent”. The pliant President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed duly issued the proclamation. Although Emergency came into effect on the night of 25 June, the Union Cabinet passed a formal resolution on the imposition of Emergency only in its meeting he next morning.

Had the takeover plan been implemented, India could have perhaps become another Pakistan with the difference that instead of army dictatorship of which Pakistan has been a victim ever since its inception in August 1947 (except for a few spells of democracy) – the country would have been under a civilian dictator. Such a development would have led to consequences worse than what happened during the Emergency.

Proclamation of Emergency, my sources claimed, came as a huge surprise to Sanjay Gandhi and members of his caucus who had urged the PM to take over even before the Allahabad High Court judgement on June 12, 1975. They were convinced that it was Siddharth Shanker Ray who had “sabotaged” their plan and had substituted it with the Emergency. They were confident that they would ultimately persuade Indira Gandhi to give her consent to their takeover plan. Their line of argument would be “Once you slip in politics and do not go the whole hog, you are out of politics”.

After the declaration of the Emergency, political leaders opposed to Indira Gandhi were arrested in a sudden swoop. The most notable among them were Jaya Prakash Narain, Morarji Desai, L.K.Advani and Atal Behari Vajpayee. (Advani and Vajpayee then belonged to the Jan Sangh, which later re-emerged as the Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP in 1980)

After Bansi Lal returned from Delhi to Chandigarh on the night of 25-26 June 1975, the Punjab CM, Giani Zail Singh, contacted him for further instructions which were to precede the promulgation of Emergency the same night.

On 27 June 1975 I was present in Giani Zail Singh’s office when he received a call from Bansi Lal asking him to take action against the editor of Jalandhar-based Urdu daily Pratap for publishing only a pithy sher (couplet) on the editorial page (the rest left blank), obviously as a protest against media censorship: ‘Na tadapne ki ijazat hai na faryaad ki hai/Ghut ke mar jaoon yehi marzi mere sayyaad ki hai.’ (I have the permission neither to writhe in pain nor to complain/That I should suffocate to death is the wish of my captor.)

The imposition of the Emergency was followed by the curbing of civil liberties, the gagging of the media by enforcing censorship and imprisoning prominent opposition leaders as well as a number of journalists. All this created a fear psychosis across the nation.

The extent of distrust and suspicion in the corridors of power could also be gauged from the fact that even some of the prime minister’s close advisers and Sanjay Gandhi’s ‘friends’, including Bansi Lal (who in popular perception was responsible for the imposition of the Emergency) apprehended that they also might be under surveillance.

Keen to know their future plans, I decided to end my prolonged disconnect with Bansi Lal caused by my differences with him on certain professional matters and requested him for a meeting. Agreeing, he asked me to meet him the same night.

The meeting took place in his bedroom which reflected an eerie atmosphere. Bansi Lal spoke in a low voice. He apparently was aware of the operational mechanism of tape-recording. He suspected that the telephone lying nearby could contain a hidden device that would record all that was being said. To prevent such a possibility, he switched on a transistor radio, increased its volume and kept it near the telephone and then started talking, albeit in a subdued tone.

Like on the question of imposing the Emergency, there were differences between Indira Gandhi and her son on the issue of holding elections when Mrs. Gandhi announced her decision on 23 January 1977 to hold elections. Sanjay wanted her to delay elections. When she disagreed with his suggestion, he insisted that the elections be postponed at least till October 1977. The Sanjay Gandhi caucus did not know on whose advice the PM had taken the decision to go in for elections. (IPA Service)