Inder Malhotra — that superb chronicler of old times, good and bad — has reminded us of the Internal Emergency of June 1975 (IE, June 26). Like him, I too lived through that troubled period of our political history. And what lingers most in my memory is the alarming change in attitude of our judges before and during the period of the Internal Emergency.

In February and March 1975, I had appeared as law officer of the Union of India in a group of matters in which preventive detention orders on persons (who were much later acknowledged to be notorious smugglers) were challenged in a series of writ petitions under Article 226. The group of matters went on for many days before a division bench of the Delhi high court and judgment was reserved, to be ultimately delivered on a Friday. The grounds of detention, the judgment said, were insufficient and all the detention orders were quashed. In the afternoon of that fateful Friday I interrupted a part-heard matter before a constitution bench of the Supreme Court presided over by the then chief justice and requested that their lordships stay the order of the Delhi high court, undertaking that an SLP (special leave petition) would be filed by Monday. The following interchange then took place:

Chief Justice: But Mr Solicitor this is a matter of personal liberty and we have neither the judgment nor any written application from government. We cannot, on a mere oral application, grant a stay.

... contd.