dear friends
We have been writing often in our group, about the various past happenings in the Indian history and also about great forgotten Indian leaders. Attempts are being made by various vested interests, to distort and to remove important happenings in our Indian history, so that the younger generations do not get the past history properly.
One such attempt was to remove the documents relating to excesses and abuse of democracy during 21 month old emergency in 1975-77. In June 1975, state of emergency was declared in India by the then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, after her election to Lok Sabha was nullified by Allahabad High Court. Many opposition leaders like Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan, Morarji Desai, Vajpayee, Advani, Ashok Mehta, George Fernandes were arrested under MISA and were imprisoned.
In the 1977 General elections held after the emergency was lifted, Congress got washed out completely in the North India, while South returned Congress. Even Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi lost their elections. Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan (popularly known as JP) was the mentor for the newly formed Janata Party. Janata Party formed the Government under Morarji Desai. This struggle was considered as 'second freedom struggle' to save democracy.
Morarji Desai Government constituted a commission in April 1977 under the chairmanship of former Chief Justice of India Justice J C Shah to look into the abuses and excesses of emergency. Shah Commission submitted its report in August 1978 in the Parliament. The report was a startling one and revealed the emergency excesses. Since press censorship was enforced during emergency, none of the media reported any excess, during that time. Hence, Shah Commission report is the only available document, about the emergency.
Due to internal problems among the leaders, Janata Government fell. In the general elections held in 1980, Indira Gandhi returned to power. After coming to power, all the copies of Shah Commission report were destroyed from all the libraries. Even Parliament library does not have any reference copy even now. According to reports, only two copies are available in National library of Australia and London University library.
Even after three decades, no attempts were made by any authority to get back the lost Shah Commission report. At this stage, Mr Erz Sezhiyan, a well known Parliamentarian and one of the founders of Janata Party along with JP, Vajpayee and others, picked up the copy of the Shah Commission Report from his personal library and has now published the book last week under the title, 'Shah Commission Reprot - Lost and regained".
Mr Era Sezhiyan, now 87, is a passionate parliamentarian and has served nearly both the houses for nearly 25 years. He is considered as one of the authorities in Indian parliamentary procedures and practices. He is maintaining a library at his house with more than 6000 rare documents/books. He is preserving all the important parliamentary reports, proceedings almost since 1965. Constitutions of all the countries in the world are available with him. I think, even national political parties may not have such huge rare collections.
I interviewed Mr Erz Sezhiyan in his library about the burred Shah Commission report. I am sharing this interview and other details for the benefit of new generation, to get the history right.
Please watch his interview in the following link:
Srinivasan
Editor
PodUniversal
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