How Vajpayee lost a no-confidence motion by one vote in the 1998 elections

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee with his alliance partners (L to R) Prakash Singh Badal, Jayalalithaa, L.K. Advani, Bansli Lal, Mamta Banerjee, Jaswant Singh, Nitish Kumar and Kushabahu Thakre at his residential in 1998. (Express archives)

Nearly a year before this resuscitated NDA avatar formed a 19-party ruling alliance in 1984, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s wife Sonia Gandhi decided to play a more formal role in the Congress. Though her active plunge into politics failed to yield dividends, the NDA stayed in power for just about a year before losing the confidence of the House by a single vote.

However, Sonia was forced to abandon her prime ministerial ambitions when she lost the support of Mulayam Singh of the Samajwadi Party (SP), Harkishan Singh Surjeet of the CPI (Marxist) and a rebellious Sharad Pawar, then in the Congress.

Sonia joins the Congress, starts campaign from Tamil Nadu 

Months before the fall of the United Front government in November 1997, Sonia joined the Congress during the party’s plenary session in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in August 1997. On December 17, 1997, the Congress Working Committee (CWC) requested her to campaign for the party in “difficult” times. She accepted its request on December 29, 1997.

Click here for the other parts of this series on the history of Indian general elections

Incidentally, her first public meeting for the 1998 polls was in Tamil Nadu, the state where her husband was assassinated on May 21, 1991. Though she addressed nearly 130 public meetings during the campaign, the Congress won only 141 seats — just one more than the party’s 1996 tally. The next step for Sonia was to take charge of the party from Sitaram Kesri, Congress treasurer since 1979 and party president since 1996. On March 14, 1998, just after the 1998 Lok Sabha polls, the CWC passed a resolution asking Kesri to step down as party president and the Indira loyalist was replaced by a 52-year-old Sonia.

Seshan’s electoral reforms, United Front fades into irrelevance

Polling was held on February 16, 22 and 28, 1998. Of 60.58 crore voters, 37.54 crore or 61.97% voters cast their votes. For these polls, the T N Seshan-led Election Commission (EC) introduced changes in filing of nominations, including increasing the number of proposers. This step alone helped reduce the total electoral hopefuls — from 13,952 in 1996 to just 4,750 in 1998. Counting started on March 2, 1984, and the results were declared within the next few days.

The BJP won 181 seats, Congress 141, CPI (M) 32, SP 20, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) 18, Rashtriya Janata Dal 17, Samata Party 12 seats, CPI nine, Akali Dal eight, Janata Dal six and Bahujan Samaj Party five. With the declaration of these results, the United Front became nearly irrelevant.

Mulayam — with 20 Lok Sabha seats in his pocket — and Lalu Prasad Yadav — with 17 seats in his kitty — joined forces to form a Congress and BJP-mukt front, named the Rashtriya Loktantrik Morcha (RLM), along with some Left leaders like Surjeet. However, many former United Front partners like the N Chandrababu Naidu-led Telugu Desam Party (TDP) decided to give the RLM a miss and support the NDA instead.

A new BJP, new NDA

The 1998 results were followed by claims and counterclaims on forming the government by the Congress, the National Front and even NDA. After Sonia met President K R Narayanan and informed him that the Congress would not stake a claim as “we have no numbers”, he invited Vajpayee to form the government. Realising the necessity of coalitions, the BJP had decided to forge an alliance with 19 different parties, including many with conflicting ideologies, and with outside support from TDP.

Vajpayee took the oath of office, for the second time, on March 20, 1998. A former United Front convenor in the previous Lok Sabha, TDP MP G M C Balayogi was elected as the Speaker in the new government. With the BJP holding the largest number of seats in the coalition — 181 — NDA was chosen as the alliance name and Vajpayee as its leader. To reach a consensus, the BJP decided to keep aside three its core issues: a temple at Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya, the abrogation of Article 370 and the Uniform Civil Code. Instead, a common minimum programme called the National Agenda for Governance was framed.

One of the biggest “controversies” that Vajpayee encountered as Prime Minister was the successful testing of nuclear weapons in Rajasthan’s Pokhran. The test was conducted with contributions by A P J Abdul Kalam (future President), then the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Prime Minister and secretary of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) then. The Pokhran tests led to India facing sanctions from multiple countries.

Dr APJ Abdul Kalam and then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at Pokhran. (Express archive)

AIADMK withdraws support, one vote takes down Vajpayee

While the NDA braved the storm the Pokhran tests unleashed, the same could hardly be said for the one its alliance partner kicked up — an act that would accelerate the collapse of the alliance. AIADMK general secretary J Jayalalithaa had been trying to make inroads into a highly polar Tamil Nadu since the death of party founder, former actor M G Ramachandran, and the two-year split in the party after his death. Her return to power in Tamil Nadu proved to be difficult despite her party’s MPs being appointed ministers in the Vajpayee government. Being a part of a ruling alliance at the Centre with its biggest rival, the DMK, which was in power in Tamil Nadu, could hardly have been easy for the AIADMK.

In constant conflict with the Vajpayee government due to her focus on politics in her home state, Jayalalithaa finally withdrew from the NDA on April 8, 1999. After the resignation of her party members from the Cabinet, Vajpayee was asked to take a vote of confidence. He tabled a motion of confidence on April 15, 1999, which was put to vote two days later. The votes on April 17, 1999, threw up a result that has never been replicated in India since. With 269 ayes and 270 noes, Vajpayee failed to prove his majority by just one vote.

Three MPs were quick to claim credit for NDA’s demise: BSP’s Mayawati; Saifuddin Soz, who was later expelled from the Farooq Abdullah-led Jammu and Kashmir National Conference for voting against Vajpayee; and Giridhar Gamang, then Chief Minister of Orissa (now Odisha). Gamang’s vote was quite interesting, given that he had been appointed as Chief Minister barely a month before the vote, on February 17, 1999, and had retained his Lok Sabha membership.

Sonia’s foreign origins raked up

NDA’s collapse was followed by attempts by Sonia to head the next government. She even met President Narayanan on April 21, 1999, to stake her claim, saying that she had the support of 272 MPs and counting. In the midst of hectic lobbying, Mulayam, who was originally for Sonia’s candidature, did a U-turn saying he would not “support a person of foreign origin” for the post of the Prime Minister. Setting the cat among the pigeons, he floated the name of West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu as an acceptable alternative to “foreigner” Sonia.

The most surprising reaction, perhaps, came from Pawar. Raking up the same issue as Mulayam, Pawar rebelled along with his party colleagues P A Sangma and Tariq Anwar. The trio was expelled from the Congress on May 20, 1999, for questioning Sonia’s Italian origins. Pawar would end up floating the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on June 10, 1999.

A war brews in Kargil

With Sonia’s dream crashing and burning even before take-off, the Congress decided not to support the United Front in forming the next government. A fresh general election was imminent. Even as the EC was struggling to prepare for the next general elections, skirmishes were reported along the India-Pakistan border.

Things came to a head when the Pakistani army managed to infiltrate areas along the Line of Control in Kargil and capture some Indian posts. The Indian Army, with support from the Indian Air Force, launched Operation Vijay on May 3, 1999, to push back the infiltrators and recapture the lost posts. India won the war, which concluded on July 26, 1999, but over 500 of its soldiers fell in the war. Delayed due to the war, the 1999 election was finally held between September 5 and October 3.