"Never a votary of parliamentary democracy, Sanjay Gandhi would have taken over from his mother as President of the Republic. In late 1976, as the horrors of the Emergency-with its forced sterilisations and slum-clearance campaigns that brought untold misery-peaked, and Mrs Gandhi, assailed by doubts, decided to call elections, Sanjay strongly resisted the move. He wanted the Emergency to continue, with Parliament to be replaced by a constituent assembly that would switch to a presidential system. His followers in the state legislatures of Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh had passed resolutions to that effect. An ardent Sanjay-ite, Bansi Lal, then defence minister, told Mrs Gandhi's cousin B.K. Nehru, "Get rid of all this election nonsense... Just make our sister president for life and there's no need to do anything else."


India, had Sanjay Gandhi survived the plane crash. Read the column by Sunil Sethi here.