DOWNFALL OF INDIRA GANDHI

The downfall of Indira Gandhi began after India won the war against Pakistan in 1971. The Allahabad High Court found Indira Gandhi guilty with electoral corruption for the 1971 elections. In 1975, Indira Gandhi called a State of Emergency under Article 352 in which she ordered the arrest of her opposition, who later joined together and formed the Janata Party In 1977, Indira Gandhi and her party, Indian National Congress, lost the election to the Janata Party, a coalition of virtually all of Indira Gandhi’s opponents. After the elections, Gandhi found herself without work, income or residence. The Congress Party split during the election campaign of 1977: veteran Gandhi supporters like Jagjivan Ram and her most loyal Bahuguna and Nandini Satpathy - very close to Indira, the three were compelled due to politicking and possibly circumstances created by Sanjay Gandhi - to part ways. The prevailing rumour was that Sanjay had intentions of dislodging Indira. The Congress Party was now a much smaller group in Parliament, although the official opposition.
The leader of the Janata Party was Jayaprakash Narayan who kept the party united. The other party leaders of the Janata Party were Morarji Desai , Charan Singh , Raj Narain and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Unable to govern owing to fractious coalition warfare, the Janata government's Home Minister, Choudhary Charan Singh, ordered the arrest of Indira and Sanjay Gandhi on several charges, none of which would be easy to prove in an Indian court. The arrest meant that Indira was automatically expelled from Parliament. These allegations included that Indira Gandhi “‘had planned or thought of killing all opposition leaders in jail during the Emergency’”.
However, this strategy backfired disastrously. Her arrest and long-running trial, however, gained her great sympathy from many people who had feared her as a tyrant just two years earlier.The Janata coalition was only united by its hatred of Indira (or "that woman" as some called her). With so little in common, the government was bogged down by infighting and Gandhi was able to use the situation to her advantage. She began giving speeches again, tacitly apologizing for "mistakes" made during the Emergency. Jayaprakash Narayan died on 8 October 1979, which broke the unity of the Janata Party and Desai took his place. Desai resigned in June 1979, and Charan Singh was appointed Prime Minister by Reddy after Gandhi promised that Congress would support his government from outside.
After a short interval, she withdrew her initial support and President Reddy dissolved Parliament in the winter of 1979. In elections held the following January, Congress was returned to power with a landslide majority.
In the 1980s, Money meant for aid given by Mrs Gandhi was used by the LTTE and other Tamil millitant groups in Sri Lanka Although Mrs Gandhi never meant to give the support to terrorism , she gave it to groups for aid for Tamils but these groups went ahead and transferred the installments to the LTTE without her knowledge.
Currency crisis
During the early 1980s, Indira's administration failed to arrest the 40 percent fall in the value of the Indian Rupee from 7 to 12 to the US Dollar.

Posted by preeti on 9/28/2010 05:14:00 PM. Filed under DOWNFALL OF INDIRA GANDHI . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0