Between 1989 and 1998, India saw six prime ministers — VP Singh, Chandra Shekhar, PV Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, HD Deve Gowda, IK Gujral and Vajpayee again. Only Rao completed his five-year term, illustrating how short-lived the other’s governments were.
It was the next set of elections — from 1999 to 2009 — that consolidated the coalition era in India and showed that fragmented verdicts need not translate into political instability and a high turnover of governments.
A crucial turning point
The 1999 election was a pivotal, often underrated, turning point in Indian political history. It saw the Vajpayee versus Sonia question answered, with the former becoming the first non-Congress leader to serve a full five-year term. However, if 1999 represented the BJP’s ability to weave alliances with the right partners, 2004 was an example of what happens if you don’t have the right partners.
Vajpayee, Sonia, Manmohan: 5 key leaders
The five leaders who defined the decade in politics: Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the prime minister who led the Bharatiya Janata Party to its first full term in government; LK Advani, under whose stewardship, the BJP failed to form the government in 2009; Sonia Gandhi, who refused to be PM after the 2004 polls, despite an emotional call by party workers; Manmohan Singh, who brought in policy changes that have stood the tests of time and disruptive politics; and HS Surjeet, to whom the Congress reached out to after the 2004 polls to build a consensus around prime minister Manmohan Singh.
No-trust vote, India Shining, UPA is born: 5 key moments
There was the April 17, 1999 no-trust vote, in which Mayawati withdrew support for the second Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. The India Shining campaign that so dramatically backfired. The United Progressive Alliance stitched together by Congress chief Sonia Gandhi. The inner voice that led her to reject the prime ministership and anoint Manmohan Singh. And a new rural jobs scheme that would be the biggest of its kind in the world.
Sharp curves: An era of dramatic reversals
The 1999 Lok Sabha election was held soon after the April trust motion that the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government lost by one vote, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) retained its seat share of 182, with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) easily forming the government. The 2004 election saw a reversal of fortunes, with the Congress creaking ahead of the BJP as the single-largest party, marking the start of what would be a decade of Congress rule.
A non-Congress first: A full term in power
Contemporary political observers agree that the 1999 result was always a matter of when rather than if. The result was India’s first non-Congress government that would complete a full term in power. But the Congress then inflicted two back-to-back surprise defeats on the BJP, in 2004 and 2009. Some cite a backlash against the India Shining campaign, others call it a counter-polarisation in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat riots, and still others credit seasoned coalition politics and the formation of a stable coalition in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). While these factors could be partly responsible, the single biggest reason for the BJP’s back-to-back defeats was a Congress revival.
