Election as president by Chief Justice
A. N. Ray. In July 1974, Ahmed was chosen by Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party as their candidate to be the next President of India. In doing so, they overlooked the then
Vice President,
Gopal Swarup Pathak, who had been elected to that post in 1969 with the support of the Congress Party. Polling for the
1974 Indian presidential election was held on 17 August in a direct contest between the Congress Party's Ahmed and the opposition candidate
Tridib Chaudhuri, a
Lok Sabha MP from the
Revolutionary Socialist Party. Ahmed won 765,587 votes (or 80.18% of the 954,783 votes cast) against Chaudhuri's 189,196 and he was declared elected on 20 August. Ahmed was sworn in as the fifth president of India on 24 August 1974, becoming the second Muslim to hold that office and the first person to be directly elevated to the presidency from the Union Cabinet. He was also the first president to be elected after the amendments to the Presidential and Vice-Presidential Elections Act, 1952 that imposed a
security deposit of and made it mandatory for every candidate in a
presidential election to be supported by ten proposing and ten
seconding legislators. Ahmed's election was
challenged unsuccessfully before
India's Supreme Court by Charu Lal Sahu, an
advocate-on-record.
Promulgation of the Emergency Ahmed imposed a
national emergency under Article 352 of
India's Constitution late in the night of 25 June 1975 on the advice of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The legality of its imposition – on the ground that "a grave emergency exists whereby the security of India is threatened by internal disturbances." – was dubious, as there were no reports to that effect from the
Intelligence Bureau, the
Home Ministry or from any or the
governors of the states, nor had the proposal been considered by the Union Council of Ministers. Although the constitutional impropriety was pointed out to him, Ahmed raised no questions and chose to sign the order imposing the emergency, a draft of which was brought to him by the Prime Minister's
personal secretary,
R. K. Dhawan. In the early hours of the next day, electricity supply was cut off to
newspaper offices in Delhi and the main leaders of opposition parties placed under arrest. The Cabinet met at 7AM on 26 June, where it was informed by the prime minister of the imposition of emergency the previous night. Prime Minister Gandhi subsequently addressed the nation on
All India Radio announcing the Emergency, beginning with the words "The President has proclaimed an emergency. This is nothing to panic about." The Emergency, which lasted until 21 March 1977, saw the suppression of civil liberties, the arrest of opposition politicians and clampdown on political parties, the suspension of
fundamental rights guaranteed by the Indian Constitution and the muzzling of the media. It has been described as a period of darkness for
India's democracy.
Ordinances and Constitutional Amendments The
two-thirds majority enjoyed by the Congress Party in India's Parliament allowed it to undertake several wide-ranging
constitutional amendments. The Prime Minister also instructed Ahmed to issue
ordinances, sidestepping Parliament and allowing for
rule by decree. In August 1975, the
thirty-eighth and
thirty-ninth Constitutional Amendment Bills passed by Parliament received presidential assent. The 38th Amendment precluded the Emergency and the ordinances passed during this period from
judicial review, while the 39th Amendment barred the courts from adjudicating
election petitions filed against the president, the vice president, the prime minister and the
speaker of the Lok Sabha and rendered any pending proceedings before the courts
null and void. Ordinances issued in 1975 included one abolishing
bonded labour, the Equal Remuneration Ordinance which provided for
equal pay for equal work or work of similar nature, the amendment to the
Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities Act, 1974 allowing detention of offenders for a period of two years, and an amendment to the Import and Export (Controls) Act increasing the severity of penalties for offences relating to the misuse of import licences and imported goods among scores of other ordinances issued during the year. In December 1975, while President Ahmed was on a
state visit to
Egypt and
Sudan, the government dispatched a special courier carrying three executive ordinances preventing the publication of material deemed objectionable by the government, abolishing the
Press Council of India and lifting immunities on media's coverage of Parliament. These were promptly signed in
Cairo by the President. The
first session of Parliament in 1976 therefore had to consider and replace with acts the numerous ordinances issued since the proclamation of Emergency in June 1975. In January 1976,
President's rule was declared in
Tamil Nadu after Ahmed dismissed
its government, headed by
Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, and dissolved the state's legislative assembly. By two ordinances issued in March 1976, the responsibility of maintaining
government accounts were taken away from the
Comptroller and Auditor General of India and vested with the accounts offices of individual government departments, while making the Comptroller and Auditor General responsible for the
audit of these accounts. In June 1976, an ordinance extended by a year the validity of provisions allowing the government to
detain any person for up to one year without disclosing the grounds for detention to the detainee under the
Maintenance of Internal Security Act. In December 1976, the
Forty-second Constitutional Amendment Bill received President Ahmed's assent. The bill, passed by both houses of Parliament in November, amended as many as 59 articles of the Constitution and the
Preamble, besides introducing a new section containing the
Fundamental Duties of citizens. Furthermore, it sought to severely circumscribe the powers of the Supreme Court, transferred several responsibilities hitherto entrusted with the state governments to the Central government, and extended the tenure of the Lok Sabha to six years.
Support for the Emergency As president, Ahmed publicly spoke in favour of the imposition of Emergency throughout this period. In his address to the nation on
Independence Day, 1975 he assured citizens that the Emergency was a "passing phase" and its imposition was necessary to save India from chaos and disruption. He also cautioned that liberty should not "degenerate into licence" and exhorted the nation to focus on increasing production. Elsewhere, he reiterated that the "Emergency is a passing phase but the era of permissive politics and national degeneration is over and we will never allow that phase to be repeated again" and that the indiscipline and disorder brought about by reactionary forces had slowed down India's development. Addressing the nation on
Republic Day, 1976, Ahmed said that the Emergency had helped India's economy and brought about "national discipline at all levels". On the Independence Day in 1976, he stated that the Emergency would not be used to switch over from the
parliamentary to a
presidential system of government or to accumulate more power than was permitted under the Constitution and that it had been issued instead "to bring about such economic, social and political changes as have become relevant and necessary in the interests of the
people of India". In private, Ahmed appeared to have misgivings about the Emergency. This was revealed in an embassy cable sent from the
United States Embassy in Delhi in August 1976 which suggested an estrangement between Ahmed and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The cable noted Ahmed's growing concern that Indira and Sanjay Gandhi were "pushing too hard on the political and Constitutional system of India" and reported that he had rebuffed her suggestion to replace the vice-president, B.D. Jatti with her former
defence minister,
Swaran Singh. Indira Gandhi's proposal to replace her entire cabinet with younger ministers was also cautioned against by Ahmed, who warned her that this would jeopardize the unity of the Congress Party. The cable went on to note that Ahmed was "uncomfortable with some of Mrs. Gandhi's actions and certainly with those of her son" and that Indira Gandhi had apologized to Ahmed on behalf of Sanjay Gandhi for his rude remarks when the President declined to give a statement for the inaugural issue of the younger Gandhi's magazine, Surya.
Abu Abraham's cartoon and the rubber stamp presidency On 10 December 1975, a cartoon by
Abu Abraham, which escaped the notice of the
government censors, appeared in the
Indian Express. The
cartoon showed Ahmed, semi-naked and in a
bathtub filled to its brim, handing over a paper he has signed to an outstretched hand of a person clothed in a formal suit and shirt. The
speech balloon reads: "If there are any more ordinances, just ask them to wait." The cartoon, which
lampooned Ahmed's pliability in signing ordinances put before him, became an
iconic image of the Emergency. The cartoon irreparably damaged Ahmed's image and legacy, and he is widely regarded as a
rubber stamp President, who was willing to sign ordinances and the proclamation of Emergency put to him without questioning the government or asking it to be reconsidered. Subsequent Presidents of India who have been thought of as pliant and meekly submitting to the government of the day have been compared to Ahmed's rubber stamp presidency.
State visits President Ahmed made state visits to
Indonesia,
Hungary,
Yugoslavia,
Egypt,
Sudan,
Iran and
Malaysia during his term in office. His visit to
Saudi Arabia in March 1975 to attend the funeral of
King Faisal was the first time an Indian President was personally present at the funeral of another
head of state and the first visit to Saudi Arabia by a senior Indian leader after
Jawaharlal Nehru's visit in 1956. He was conferred with an
honorary degree of
Doctor of Law by the
University of Pristina,
Kosovo during his visit to
Yugoslavia. During his state visit to
Sudan in December 1975, Ahmed visited
Juba in
South Sudan, where he addressed the Regional Peoples' Assembly, in one of the earliest visits by an Indian dignitary to
South Sudan.
Interest in sports Ahmed was a keen sportsman throughout his life and was an active
golfer during his presidency. He was a centre-half in
field hockey and played for the Combined Universities Hockey Team in Cambridge. For many years he was president of Assam's State
Football and
Cricket Associations. He served as the vice-chairman of the Assam Council of Sports and was later President of the
All-India Lawn Tennis Federation. Ahmed introduced the President's Polo Cup as an open tournament in 1975, when he was the
patron-in-chief of the
Indian Polo Association. Temporarily discontinued in 2005, it has been held since 2013 as the President's Polo Cup Exhibition Match. == Death and burial ==