How the Shah Commission Report on Emergency Was Lost, Then Found
The Shah Commission probed Emergency excesses, but its report disappeared from public view until a former MP republished it in 2010.
On June 12, 1975, Justice Jagmohanlal Sinha of the Allahabad High Court found Prime Minister Indira Gandhi guilty of electoral malpractice in Courtroom no. 24. The court held that she had violated Section 123(7) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, by using the services of gazetted officers for her campaign. Her election was declared null and void, and she was barred from holding electoral office for six years.
In an attempt to retain power, Gandhi advised President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed to declare a national emergency. The President complied, and Emergency was proclaimed at midnight on June 25, 1975. Fundamental rights were suspended, and the federal structure was effectively converted into a unitary one. Over the following 21 months, political leaders were jailed, the press was censored, and forced sterilisations took place.
After Gandhi's defeat in the 1977 general elections, the Janata Party government set up the Shah Commission in 1978 under former Chief Justice J.C. Shah to investigate the excesses of the Emergency period. Author Katherine Frank, in her biography of Indira Gandhi, noted that the former Prime Minister was unwilling to cooperate during her deposition.
The Commission produced two interim reports and a final report on August 6, 1978. These documented abuse of power by the Central government, including arbitrary arrests and detention of political dissidents, media censorship, and systematic suppression of civil liberties.
The findings did not stay in public memory for long. Ideological disagreements fractured the Janata government, and within two years voters returned Indira Gandhi to power with a decisive mandate. According to author Vernon Hewitt, once back in office she sought to recall copies of the Commission's reports wherever possible. For a time, it appeared she had succeeded: researchers, authors, and journalists could not obtain the report, and the document seemed lost.
That changed in 2010, when Rajagopal 'Era' Sezhiyan, a former Member of Parliament, found the report in his home library and published it as Shah Commission Report: Lost, and Regained. Its republication brought an important historical record back into political, legal, and academic circles. It later emerged that the National Library of Australia also held a copy.
Sezhiyan described the document as more than an investigative report, calling it a historical record that serves as a warning to future governments not to disturb the basic structure of a functioning democracy, and as a guide for those suppressed under despotic rule to reclaim freedom through struggle.
On June 24, 2025, Goa Governor P.S. Sreedharan Pillai launched his book Shah Commission: Echoes from a Buried Report, suggesting the report is gradually returning to public consciousness.