Govt must scrap internal emergency to protect democracy

Retaining internal emergency provisions risks democratic backsliding and invites potential authoritarian misuse in future governance

- S MURLIDHARAN

In a vastly infotaining novel of yore, The R Document, Irving Wallace envisages an unstuck attempt to add to the US Constitution a provision akin to Article 352 of the Indian Constitution—government’s power to declare both external and internal emergency, suspending freedom of speech.

Of course, such a putative dictator-rule regime has not been provided for in the US Constitution, either before or after the novel. The Bill of Rights is sacred and inviolate for the American people.

So much so that, in the US, there is no equivalent provision allowing the blanket suspension of constitutional rights, except that the following extraordinary powers are available:

1. The U.S. Constitution permits the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus only when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, public safety may require it.

2. The National Emergencies Act, 1976, enables the President to declare an emergency and access over 100 specialised statutory powers, but they are subject to oversight and must be renewed annually by Congress.

Both these powers have largely remained on paper, though the incumbent President has been itching to use one or more of such statutory powers.

Article 352 of the Indian Constitution, however, arms the political executive to declare both external and internal emergency. So far, external emergency has been declared twice—1962, in the wake of Chinese aggression, and 1971, to deal with Pakistan's muscle-flexing in quelling rebellion in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.