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Journalism of Courage
On May 21, 1991, six and a half years after Indira Gandhi was assassinated, Rajiv Gandhi was blown up by a suicide bomber of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). India was in the middle of a Lok Sabha election, its polity was fractured, and its economy was in deep crisis.
The election was held in three phases, on May 20, June 12, and June 15. In Punjab, votes were cast in February 1992. Unlike in 1984, Rajiv’s assassination did not bring an avalanche of sympathy votes for the Congress. But the party did return to power, with P V Narasimha Rao at the head of a minority government.
T N Seshan, an IAS officer of the 1955 batch and a former cabinet secretary, was appointed Chief Election Commissioner on December 12, 1990. He enforced election rules with an uncompromising firmness that elevated him to legendary status for many Indians. It also changed the way in which the Election Commission of India was viewed.
A little less than 500 million electors were eligible to vote in the election, but the burning summer ensured a turnout of only 56.73%, much less than the 61.95% in 1989.
The Congress won 232 of the 521 seats for which elections were held. The BJP, which contested 468 seats, won 120, the Janata Dal 59, CPI(M) 35, and CPI 14. Rajiv won in Amethi by a margin of more than 1.12 lakh votes — cast the day before he was assassinated. In the bypolls that followed, Rajiv’s close associate Captain Satish Sharma won the seat.
Former Prime Ministers V P Singh and Chandra Shekhar won from Fatehpur and Ballia respectively, and the future Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda from Hassan on a Janata Party ticket. Pratibha Patil, the future President, won in Amravati.
L K Advani won in New Delhi and Gandhinagar (he retained Gandhinagar), and Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Lucknow and Vidisha (he retained Lucknow). Other leaders of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, Uma Bharti and Vinay Katiyar, won in Khajuraho and Ayodhya respectively.
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Bahujan Samaj Party founder Kanshi Ram won from Etawah. The young firebrand Mamata Banerjee won from Calcutta South (now Kolkata Dakshin) and held the seat until 2011, when she became Chief Minister of West Bengal.
Rajiv’s death meant the Congress suddenly had no candidate for Prime Minister.
Days after the assassination, senior Congress leaders Arjun Singh, Sitaram Kesri, and M L Fotedar met P V Narasimha Rao and suggested that Sonia Gandhi be made the party’s next leader. Apparently Rao disagreed strongly — according to Arjun Singh’s autobiography, A Grain of Sand in the Hourglass of Time, the would-be Prime Minister “burst out in anger and virtually yelled out words to the effect that whether it was essential that the Congress Party should be treated like a train where the compartments have to be attached to an engine belonging to the Nehru-Gandhi family or were there other alternatives?”
One of these “alternatives” could have been Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister N D Tiwari, but he lost the election in Nainital. And after Sonia declined to head the party, Rao became Congress president and took oath as Prime Minister on June 21, 1991.
Politically, Rao’s tenure was marked by a constant tussle with those close to 10 Janpath (Sonia’s residence). Rao managed a majority in Parliament with defections from some parties, including a faction of the Janata Dal. His tenure saw multiple scandals, including the 1992 Indian stock market scam, known as the Harshad Mehta scam, the 1995 Delhi housing allotment scam involving then Housing Minister Sheila Kaul, the 1995 petrol pump scam involving Satish Sharma, the 1996 telecom scam involving then Minister of Telecom Sukh Ram, and the Jain diaries case, also known as the hawala scam.
Two events of the Rao years changed India forever — the liberalisation of the economy, spearheaded by Finance Minister Manmohan Singh, and the razing of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya by kar sevaks on December 6, 1992.
On the night after the demolition, Rao dismissed governments in four states ruled by the BJP — UP (Kalyan Singh), Madhya Pradesh (Sunderlal Patwa), Rajasthan (Bhairon Singh Shekhawat), and Himachal Pradesh (Shanta Kumar). For the third time since Independence, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was banned. The ban was later quashed by the Jabalpur High Court.
The demolition of the mosque was followed by riots in several cities, including Mumbai. Worse was to follow: on March 12, 1993, a series of bomb blasts killed more than 250 people in the city. The mafia boss Dawood Ibrahim, who engineered the bombings, has been absconding since that time.
Rao decided to bring back an elected government in Punjab. Assembly polls were held in February 1992. Beant Singh became Chief Minister after nearly five years of President’s Rule. But he himself fell victim to a terrorist attack on August 31, 1995.
Rao had many rivals in the party. Arjun Singh, the former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and one of Sonia’s close confidants, claimed in his book that he wrote to Rao raising a range of concerns. Arjun Singh had resigned as Human Resource Development (now Education) Minister on December 24, 1994, and he was soon suspended over alleged anti-party activities.
Arjun Singh joined hands with Sheila Dikshit, the future Chief Minister of Delhi, and N D Tiwari, who was upset with Rao’s decision to ally with the BSP in the UP Assembly polls, formed the All India Indira Congress (Tiwari). With the blessings of 10 Janpath, many other leaders too joined Tiwari’s faction at the Centre and in the states.
As Narasimha Rao’s tenure neared its end, the organisation of the Congress was crumbling, even as other parties at the Centre (BJP) and in the states (Janata Dal, BSP, and Samajwadi Party) were consolidating themselves. As the next Lok Sabha election approached, the demands for Rao’s resignation grew louder.
