December 12, 2024 19:49 (IST)
Follow us:
facebook-white sharing button
twitter-white sharing button
instagram-white sharing button
youtube-white sharing button
UP teenager kills mother, lives with body for 5 days | At least six people including a child killed in Tamil Nadu hospital fire | Amid Atul Subhash row, SC says mere harassment is not enough to prove abetment to suicide | India's D Gukesh becomes youngest ever world champion in chess | Devendra Fadnavis meets PM Modi amid suspense over Maharashtra portfolio allocation | Congress wants to deviate the issue of Sonia Gandhi-George Soros link: JP Nadda | Bengaluru techie suicide: Atul Subhash's family demanded Rs. 10 lakh as dowry leading to my father's death, claims estranged wife | Syria rebels torch tomb of ousted president Bashar al-Assad's father | Donald Trump vows to eliminate birthright citizenship after taking charge | No alliance with Congress in Delhi polls: AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal

Indira Gandhi wasn't aware of emergency provision: Pranab

| | Dec 14, 2014, at 03:18 am
New Delhi, Dec 11 (IBNS): President Pranab Mukherjee in his new book, released online on Thursday on his 79th birthday, wrote former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was not aware of the emergency provision in the Constitution and acted on advice from Congress leader Siddharth Shankar Ray when she imposed the Emergency of 1975-77.
"Indira asked SS Ray to go with her to the President, the president asked Shri Ray as to the exact words of the constitution and then told the PM to make her recommendation," Mukherjee wrote in his book 'Dramatic Decade, The Indira Gandhi Years'.
 
Mukherjee claims Siddharth Shankar Ray was a leader who took a "sharp about turn" before the Shah Commission set up to look into the Emergency's excesses  and pinned the blame on Indira Gandhi.
 
"Ray ran into Indira draped in a crimson sari that day in the commission hall. He remarked: 'You look pretty today.' Indira snapped back, 'despite your efforts,'" he wrote.
 
He stated that the Emergency an "avoidable event".
 
"Discipline in public life, a growing economy, controlled inflation, reversed trade deficit, enhanced spending on development and a crackdown on tax evasion and smuggling," he wrote.
 
His book, which is considered as an insider's account on some of the most game-changing events in Indian politics.
 
It will be sold online for 21 days before it hits the bookstores.

Support Our Journalism

We cannot do without you.. your contribution supports unbiased journalism

IBNS is not driven by any ism- not wokeism, not racism, not skewed secularism, not hyper right-wing or left liberal ideals, nor by any hardline religious beliefs or hyper nationalism. We want to serve you good old objective news, as they are. We do not judge or preach. We let people decide for themselves. We only try to present factual and well-sourced news.

Support objective journalism for a small contribution.