President Fakruddin Ahmed resented Indira, Sanjay’s family planning policy: WikiLeaks

NEW DELHI: Fakruddin Ali Ahmed, the rubberstamp president during the Emergency era, may not have been a complete rubberstamp after all.
According to a secret US embassy cable sent on August 6, 1976, the mission said, “We have heard much more reliably (than rumours) that Fakruddin is seriously concerned over some of the govt's family planning moves.”
The cable said the rumours have been about “some disaffection between the prime minister and president Fakruddin Ali Ahmed. The stories vary but have as their central core that Fakruddin is concerned that the PM and her son are pushing too hard on the political and constitutional system of India.”
It said one version was that the PM asked Fakruddin to arrange for vice-president B D Jatti to resign, “since he had been too quiet in praise of the emergency and had refused to endorse the govt's family planning programs”. In his place, the PM wanted to place former defence minister Swaran Singh, the embassy believed. “Fakruddin allegedly expressed his strong reluctance to go along with such a scenario,” the cable speculated.
Another version is that the PM told the president she wished her entire cabinet to resign so that she could replace many of the older ministers with younger, more vigorous, and fresher-minded individuals. “Fakruddin allegedly expressed grave concern over any plan for the wholesale disposal of senior Congress colleagues on the grounds this would jeopardize Congress unity and ill-serve those who had followed the PM in times of adversity,” the cable added.
Another major reason cited as a possibility was Fakruddin's pique to a request by Sanjay Gandhi that he provide a statement for the opening issue of Sanjay's new magazine, "Surya". The President allegedly turned down the request as inappropriate and unusual. “Sanjay is said to have responded with unkind words about the President which were reported to him, and led to his complaining to Mrs Gandhi, and ultimately to the PM’s offer of an apology on behalf of her son,” the cable said.
The embassy also said, “Fakruddin indeed does seem to be uncomfortable with some of Mrs Gandhi's actions and certainly with those of her son (we have heard much more reliably that Fakruddin is seriously concerned over some of the govt's family planning moves).”