EMERGENCY: A BITTER ALTERNATIVE TO 21 DAYS LOCKDOWN

India has taken the extreme measure of enforcing a 21-day lockdown, amidst corona outbreak, making it the first time a nation was shut under the provisions of the Disaster Management Act, 2005.

- Abhinav Jain

Section 6(2)(i) of the Act authorizes the NDMA (National Disaster Management Authority), headed by the prime minister, to take measures for the prevention of disaster, or the mitigation, or preparedness and capacity building for dealing with the threatening disaster situation or disaster as it may consider necessary. The Act also provisions for a national executive authority, which exercises powers to issue guidelines that, will be in effect during the lockdown.

The other alternative could have been imposing emergency,,which could have given a unitary structure to the country, allowing the country to override state directives.

A state of emergency in India refers to a period of governance under an altered constitutional setup that can be proclaimed by the President of India, when they perceive grave threats to the nation from internal and external sources or from financial situations of crisis. Under the advice of the cabinet of ministers and using the Constitution of India, the President can overrule many provisions of the constitution, which guarantee fundamental rights to the citizens of India and acts governing devolution of powers to the states which form the federation. In the history of independent India, a state of emergency has been declared thrice.

The first instance was between 26 October 1962 to 10 January 1968 during the India-China war, when the security of India was declared as being threatened by external aggression. The second instance was between 3 December 1971 to 21 March 1977, which was originally proclaimed during the Indo-Pakistan war.