Word: gandhis
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...since India gained its independence from Britain in 1947 had it faced a constitutional crisis of such magnitude. Last week Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was found guilty of campaign irregularities in the 1971 parliamentary elections that returned her to office for a second term. As a result, she was barred from her seat in Parliament and disqualified from holding elective office for six years. Her lawyers immediately announced that they would appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, and Justice Jag Mohan Lai Sinha issued a stay of 20 days pending the appeal. Even if it is overturned, Judge Sinha...
...case grew out of Mrs. Gandhi's campaign four years ago for her parliamentary seat in Rae Bareli, her home district, in the poverty-stricken state of Uttar Pradesh, 300 miles southeast of New Delhi. She won a landslide victory -183,000 votes to 71,000 for her opponent, socialist Raj Narain. Barely a month after the election, Narain, 58, an old and bitter foe of Mrs. Gandhi and her late father, Jawaharlal Nehru, went to court and charged that Mrs. Gandhi and her staff, in violation of India's equivalent of the U.S.'s Hatch...
...case has been in the courts ever since. When it finally came to trial, Mrs. Gandhi, in an unprecedented move, took the witness stand for 6% hours in her own defense. Her appearance turned into a sensation when the editor of a Hindi newspaper was caught entering the court with a loaded gun and arrested on suspicion of planning to assassinate her. Two days later, would-be assassins also attempted-unsuccessfully-to kill the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court...
Extra Police. Justice Sinha exonerated Mrs. Gandhi of charges that she had used air force planes for campaign purposes, bribed voters with blankets, clothing and liquor, spent more than the $4,500 limit, and used the Congress Party's symbol (a cow and a calf) in an illicit religious appeal for votes. But he ruled that she had allowed Yashpal Kapoor, a key political aide, to campaign for her prior to quitting his government post. Justice Sinha, who is regarded as a staunchly non-political jurist, also found that the Uttar Pradesh state government had illegally assisted...
...most standards of political corruption-particularly in India, where bureaucratic malfeasance is rampant -the charges seemed trivial. Both hinge on technicalities. Mrs. Gandhi testified that Kapoor resigned on Jan. 14 and began working in her campaign on Feb. 1. The judge ruled that Kapoor's resignation was not valid until it was put in writing on Jan. 25 and that in fact he helped organize her campaign as early as Jan. 7. As for the second charge, Mrs. Gandhi testified that the state's deployment of extra police was necessary for security reasons. The other arrangements, she added...