Sanjay took complete control of the government. He demanded total submission from union ministers and those found reluctant were shown the door. For example, I K Gujral lacked the killer instinct as I&B minister and an unforgiving Sanjay replaced him with an aggressive V C Shukla. Ministers like Bansi Lal, the then defense minister, made all appointments including appointment of armed forces personnel after due approval from Sanjay.
The unbridled power that Sanjay enjoyed reminded of a typical dictatorship where one person had all the powers without a shade of constitutional authority and public accountability. Sanjay Gandhi formed a team of his hand-picked persons that mainly included Jagmohan, the vice-chairman of Delhi Development Authority (DDA), Bansi Lal, the union defense minister, Ambika Soni, president of the Youth Congress, R K Dhawan, the prime minister's stenographer and Dhirendra Brahmachari, a Yoga teacher who also ran a firearms factory in Kashmir.
This coterie became so powerful that they could get anything done at will. Everybody from bureaucrats to businessman started paying obeisance to this coterie to get government favour. Jagmohan who always dreamt of making Delhi clean of slums, ordered bulldozers to move into slums without any fear. According to an estimate, DDA had displaced mere 60,000 families before emergency but within 15 months of emergency the number had almost doubled.
The most controversial of Sanjay's initiatives was compulsory sterilization. Sanjay believed that India's ever increasing population was coming in way of its economic growth and social development. Sanjay was not wrong in his assessment but the coercive means he adopted to check population boom was draconian in nature. In his eagerness to make sterilization a big success, Sanjay encouraged competition between states. He will scold CM of one state by pointing out that another CM has achieved twice or thrice the number of sterilization compared to his state.
