The Emergency 50 years on | Echoes from Courtroom No. 24: Verdict unseated PM Indira Gandhi, she struck back at nation

The view of the Allahabad High Court. (Express Photo by Shyamlal Yadav)

For the first time in the history of independent India, a Prime Minister’s election had been set aside. Months earlier, the courtroom had witnessed another first — the Prime Minister being cross-examined for two consecutive days.

Justice Sinha then signed on the order, one that would set off a spiral of events that culminated in Indira Gandhi invoking Constitutional provisions to impose an internal Emergency – a 21-month period that witnessed an unprecedented suspension of fundamental rights and the suppression of dissent across the country.

Indira Gandhi being sworn in as PM after the 1971 election. (Express Archives)

On a weekday morning, nearly 50 years to the day Courtroom No 24 of the Allahabad High Court witnessed the defining moment, the tall, teak doors to the room stayed latched, with the court being shut for vacation. The room has now been redesignated ‘Nyay Kaksh or Courtroom 34’ as part of a regular administrative rejig.

Senior advocates practising in the High Court say the second-floor courtroom was chosen for specific security reasons. Considering the Prime Minister was appearing in court for her cross-examination on March 18 and March 19, 1975, the courtroom, at the far end of a corridor that is open only on one side, was considered the safest from a security point of view.

Main entrance of the Allahabad High Court. (Express Photo by Shyamlal Yadav)

It was on April 24, 1971, that Raj Narain, a socialist who lost the Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seat to Indira Gandhi that year as a joint Opposition candidate of the Samyukta Socialist Party, challenged the election result alleging electoral malpractices and misuse of government machinery by the then Prime Minister. When the petition was filed, no one gave it a chance.

The blank editorial in The Indian Express after the Proclamation.

The petition was first listed before Justice William Broome, the last British judge of the High Court. But Broome retired in December 1971, after which it went to at least two different benches — that of Justice B N Lokur (father of former Supreme Court judge Madan B Lokur) and Justice K N Srivastava – but their retirements led to the petition being assigned to Justice Sinha in early 1975.

As the recording of the oral evidence started on February 12, 1975, the courtroom witnessed several high-profile witnesses on either side – P N Haksar, then vice chairman, Planning Commission, who appeared for Indira Gandhi; and L K Advani (then president of the Bhartiya Jan Sangh), Karpoori Thakur (ex-CM of Bihar) and S Nijalingappa (president of Congress-O) who deposed for Raj Narain.

While S C Khare argued for Indira Gandhi, Shanti Bhushan and R C Srivastava were advocates for Raj Narain. S N Kackar, then advocate general of UP, appeared for the State government and Attorney General of India Niren De for the Government of India.

Courtroom No. 24 of the Allahabad High Court, from where Justice Sinha delivered his verdict, is now Courtroom No. 34. (Express photo by Shyamlal Yadav)

Finally, it was time for the Prime Minister herself to appear in the witness box. She reached Allahabad on March 17, 1975, a day before her two-day cross examination.

By all accounts, people had poured into the court complex by 9 am, nearly an hour before Justice Sinha could arrive. Among those present in the court were leading advocates and political stalwarts of the time – Opposition leaders Madhu Limaye, Shyam Nandan Mishra (who later became Foreign Minister) and Rabi Ray (who later became Lok Sabha Speaker); and, on the other side, Indira Gandhi’s son Rajiv Gandhi and daughter-in-law Sonia Gandhi.

Justice Sinha with his parents, wife and kids. (Express)

An incident that’s now part of court lore is how, while the normal practice is for the witness to stand in the box, Indira Gandhi was provided a chair on a raised platform so that she would be on the same level as the judge. Indira Gandhi’s counsel S C Khare had requested Justice Sinha to constitute a Commission that would take her evidence in Delhi, but Sinha had disallowed it.

Days later, the arguments were wrapped up and the court closed for summer vacations on May 23, 1975.

In his book The Case That Shook India: The Verdict That Led to the Emergency, Prashant Bhushan, whose father Shanti Bhushan was counsel for Raj Narain and later became Union Law Minister, wrote of the many pressures Justice Sinha faced after May 23, when the arguments were wrapped up and the verdict awaited.

Justice Sinha at the HC on June 12, 1975. (Express Archives)

“A special task force of the CID was employed to find out the contents of the judgment,” wrote Prashant Bhushan, adding that CID sleuths made a couple of visits to the home of Justice Sinha’s steno Manna Lal.

Over the next three weeks, as he wrote the judgment, Justice Sinha is said to have locked himself up at home – with visitors and callers being told that he was away in Ujjain to see his elder brother, a professor.

Bhushan wrote that the night before the verdict, Justice Sinha also arranged for his steno Manna Lal to stay at Bungalow No 10, adjacent to the High Court building. The bungalow has since been demolished; in its place is a multi-story structure that’s part of the High Court complex.

At his home in Prayagraj’s Civil Lines, Justice Vipin Sinha, the second of Justice Sinha’s three sons, who retired as a judge of the Allahabad High Court in 2020, recalls the pressure the family faced in the days before and after the judgment. “I was in Class 11 then and those days were very hard for us. We got a lot of very abusive calls, so much so that we did not allow our father to answer the phone.”

Justice Shambhunath Srivastava, a retired judge of the Allahabad High Court who started his practice in 1968 and was present in the courtroom on June 12, 1975, recalls the moments that followed Justice Sinha’s verdict.

Some were surprised, some were shocked and Indira Gandhi’s counsel Khare rushed to firefight. His nephew and junior, V N Khare (who later became CJI), drafted a stay application in his handwriting, following which Justice Sinha granted a stay on his judgement for 20 days.

Jutice Sinha (extreme left) with Bhimji Narayanrao Lokur (extreme right) and person is Justice Parekh. (Express)

“Everything was done in such a hurry that the stay application was not even typed,” says Justice Srivastava.

Ashok Mehta, senior advocate and former Additional Solicitor General and presently Additional Advocate General of UP, who started his practice from the Allahabad High Court in 1980, speaks of the legacy Justice Sinha left behind with his judgment. “There are few judges who can match up to Justice Sinha and Justice H R Khanna (who delivered the lone dissenting judgment that the individual’s right to life and personal liberties are inalienable even when Emergency is in place). Whenever an election petition comes before court, the first matter that comes to our mind is that of Raj Narain vs Indira Gandhi. This is what we at Allahabad High Court must be proud of.”

Fifty years later, there are few who can bear witness to that day in Courtroom No 24. Justice Sinha, who passed away in March 2008, had in an interview to this correspondent in August 1996 played down the enormity of his judgment, saying, “For me, it was like any other matter. My job was over as soon as I delivered the verdict.”

Yet, according to those who have known Justice Sinha closely, there was more than one ‘judgment’ that day. Senior advocate Gopal Swarup Chaturvedi, a family friend of Justice Sinha’s, says Justice Sinha had prepared two orders – one allowing Raj Narain’s petition and the other dismissing it. Given the extremely high-profile nature of the case, the second petition was a red herring, meant to fob off those who were allegedly trying to access the judgment.

At 10 am on June 12, 1975, Justice Sinha read out from the first copy – a verdict that was to alter the course of the nation.