Hindustan Times

Nishant Ranjan

Abhishek Jha

Roshan Kishore

The first non-Congress government at the Centre was sworn in soon after Emergency, in 1977. It lasted less than three years. What followed was a rather misleading triumph for the Congress, however. The 1984 election would, in fact, mark the end of single-party dominance for a long time in India.

The limits of anti-Congress politics

<p>The first non-Congress government at the Centre was sworn in soon after the Emergency, in 1977. But it lasted less than three years.</p><p>The Janata Party government — a mix of ideologically divergent parties that included the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), various factions of the Socialist parties, and some splinter groups of the Congress led by Jagjivan Ram and Hemavati Nandan Bahuguna — collapsed under the weight of its contradictions.</p><p>The Janata Party contested the election under the symbol of the Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD) in 1977. From 1977 to 1980, India had two prime ministers. Morarji Desai held the position for most of this period, until he was ousted by Chaudhary Charan Singh, who, with the backing of the Congress, took over as prime minister. Singh's government lasted only 23 days, however. The Congress then withdrew support, triggering a mid-term general election in 1980 that saw the party regain power with a significant majority.</p><p>Here are three charts that explore the Congress’s post-Emergency politics, from 1980 to 1984.</p><h2 style="text-align:center;">1980: BLD loses 66% of its seats to Congress</h2><p>Unlike in the 1977 election, there was no united opposition against the Congress in 1980. The Janata Party, which had initially come together, splintered into multiple factions. Chaudhary Charan Singh led the Janata Party Secular (JNP-S). Chandrasekhar led the Janata Party (JNP). The Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) walked out too.</p><p>The Congress made a significant comeback, regaining 195 seats from the Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD) — a remarkable 66% of the total seats won by BLD in the 1977 election. The two breakaway factions of the Janata Party, JNP-S and JNP, secured 41 and 31 seats respectively, which accounted for 14% and 10% of the seats won by the BLD in 1977.</p><p>The Congress successfully repaired the damage it had suffered in 1977, particularly in the Hindi heartland. Notably, the Congress reclaimed 30, 32, 51 and 18 seats in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan respectively, which it had lost to the BLD in 1977.</p><p>The 1980 results suggested that Indira Gandhi had made a comeback from the setbacks of the Emergency.</p>

<h2 style="text-align:center;">1984: Congress makes Lok Sabha history</h2><p>The 1984 general election was held in the wake of the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Rajiv Gandhi was administered the oath of office hours after her death, and the party went to the polls amid large-scale anti-Sikh violence, with the national capital being one of the worst affected regions. Riding a wave of sympathy at the polls, the Congress won 414 seats (after elections in Punjab and Assam were completed in 1985), with a seat and vote share of 76.5% and 48.1% respectively. The vote and seat share of the Congress in 1984 remains the highest for any single party in a Lok Sabha election.</p>

<h2>But the Congress did not sweep everywhere in the 1984-85 election</h2><p>In four states, namely Andhra Pradesh, Assam, West Bengal, and Punjab, the Congress did not win a majority of seats in 1984-85. It had a seat share of 14.3% in Andhra Pradesh, the lowest in any of the states with more than 10 seats. The Telugu Desam Party emerged as the second-biggest party at the national level, by winning 30 seats in Andhra Pradesh. Communist parties in West Bengal also managed to survive the sympathy wave, winning 26 of 42 seats in that state. Punjab and Assam were caught in separatist movements by this time and were the other two states where Congress did not win a majority. This marked a shift from 1980, when the Congress won 12 of 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab. And a shift from the previous full-fledged Lok Sabha election in Assam, when the Congress had won 10 of 14 seats, in 1977.</p><p>A further examination of the 1984-85 victory at the constituency level reveals nuances in comparison to previous elections. While the Congress’s success was undeniable, it fell short of the median victory margin percentage achieved in the 1971 election. Additionally, the median victory percentage of the BLD in 1977 surpassed the Congress’s triumph in 1984, standing at 32.7% — the highest in the history of Lok Sabha elections. These factors would play out soon enough, with the Congress set for a period of prolonged decline.</p>

<h2>1984 also began an important churn in India’s anti-Congress space</h2><p>1984 was the first election contested by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), a rechristened version of the Bhartiya Jana Sangh, the political arm of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. While the BJP won only two Lok Sabha seats in 1984, and was much behind the communists, socialists and the regional parties in the south, by 1989, it had grown in strength on the back of the Ayodhya movement, won 89 seats and provided outside support to the National Front government led by VP Singh (which also had the support of the Left parties).</p><p>The 1984 election, in fact, marked the end of single-party dominance for a long time in India. Sure, the Congress managed to run a minority government for five years between 1991 and 1996. But then came the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which proved conclusively, with its run from 1999 to 2004, that a non-Congress government could also last a full-term.</p>