India, May 10 -- Former Chief Justice of India (CJI) Bhushan R Gavai on Saturday delivered a scathing reflection on the constitutional collapse during the Emergency of 1975, saying the period exposed how the judiciary, instead of acting as a safeguard against excesses of the State, "aligned with State power", while Parliament, the executive and the judiciary all failed in the discharge of their constitutional duties.

Delivering the 19th Annual Sujata Jayawardena Memorial Oration in Colombo on the theme 'In a True Democracy, is Parliament Supreme?', Justice Gavai said the infamous ADM Jabalpur Vs Shivkant Shukla judgment represented "perhaps the most extreme judicial deference to executive and legislative power in India's constitutional h...