The Indian Emergency of 26 June 1975 – 21 March 1977 was a 21-month period, when President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, upon advice by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, declared a state of emergency under Article 352 of the Constitution of India, effectively bestowing on him the power to rule by decree, suspending elections and civil liberties. It is one of the most controversial times in the history of independent India. Alok Narayan, a well-known scholar of law, called it one of India's "blackest hours". Opponents had long made allegations that Indira's party, Congress, had practiced electoral... fraud to win the 1971 elections. The Gandhian socialist Jayaprakash Narayan had been agitating in Bihar for a change in provincial government, and increasingly sought to direct popular action against the Central Government through satyagrahas. Narayan and his supporters sought to unify students, peasants, and labour organisations in a 'Total Revolution' to nonviolently transform Indian society. Indira's party was defeated in Gujarat by a coalition of parties calling itself the Janata Party , and even faced an all-party, no-confidence motion in Parliament.
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