BENGALURU: Former Lokayukta Justice Santosh Hegde here on Friday hoped that Emergency will not be imposed again in India. He was narrating the perils of the draconian law imposed by former prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1975, while participating in a dialogue on the book, ‘The Conscience Network’, authored by TNIE columnist Sugata Srinivasaraju.
The book chronicles the efforts of three Indian origin youth who resisted Emergency from the US -- PhD students Ravi Chopra and Anand Kumar, and S R Hiremath, a Kannadiga.
Justice Hegde, who was a 35 -year-old lawyer then, had arranged the country’s top lawyers to argue before the Karnataka HC for leaders jailed here. “The Emergency was declared to save the chair of a person of a family that had already ruled the country for fifty years. Hope such a situation doesn’t arise in future,” he remarked.
“Atal Behari Vajpayee, LK Advani, Madhu Dandavate among others who were in Bengaluru for a parliamentary work were detained. Noted lawyer Rama Jois, who came forward to fight their cases, was also jailed. I travelled to Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai and got Soli Sorabji, Shanthi Bushan and Venugopal to argue in the HC,” he recalled.
Writer K Marulasiddappa said there is an emergency-like situation in the country now as constitutional bodies have become puppets of the Centre.
“Then, India was Indira, now Modi is ‘avtar purusha’ (incarnation of God). Those who criticise the government are branded urban Naxalites,” he said. He felt there is an emergency-like situation across the world as dictators are ruling all over.
Retired IAS officer Chiranjiv Singh, who was the chief censor in Karnataka during the emergency, said the emergency exposed the true colours of leaders as most of them compromised their positions for future political gains. Except for Akali Dal all compromised, he said.
“At 9 pm (on June 26, 1975) when emergency was clamped, Home Secretary Hanuman called me and asked me not to release the proof copy of The Indian Express until 3 pm. I told him it’s illegal and asked him to speak to CM (Devaraj Urs),” he said.
Senior journalist AVS Namboodiri also spoke. Three protagonists of the book took part in an interaction.