2004 Lok Sabha elections: When BJP’s ‘India Shining’ failed to resonate, leading to the UPA era

The “feel-good factor” the BJP was banking on after its “India Shining” campaign led to a windfall for the Congress and kept the right-wing party out of power for a decade. Vajpayee was replaced by Manmohan Singh as the new Prime Minister. A “technocrat” Finance Minister in the P V Narasimha Rao Cabinet, Singh would head the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance for 10 years.

Changes before the polls

In 2000, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA)-II government had created three new states — Uttaranchal (later renamed Uttarakhand, by dividing Uttar Pradesh), Jharkhand (from Bihar) and Chhattisgarh (from Madhya Pradesh).

Many schemes were launched under Vajpayee, including the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), the Golden Quadrilateral, a national highway network connecting Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai, and the north-south corridor of national highways. Home loans were made cheaper, besides efforts to resolve India-Pakistan disputes, particularly on Kashmir.

However, these initiatives were overshadowed by the 2001 UTI scam, the discontinuation of the old-age pension scheme in 2003 and the initiation of contractual jobs, also in 2003, and other decisions — above all, the annoyance among BJP-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) cadres. Visible cracks had started to surface between BJP and its ideological fountainhead, the RSS. Allegedly annoyed with the government policies, RSS sarsanghchalak (chief) K S Sudarshan attacked Vajpayee’s Principal Secretary Brijesh Mishra in March 2001 saying, “There are some incompetent people sitting in the PMO (Prime Minister’s Office).”

Brimming with overconfidence, BJP leaders were completely disconnected with ground realities. Though the party did come out with ‘the NDA Agenda for Development, Good Governance and Peace’ with the “overarching goal of becoming a Developed Nation by 2020”, nothing worked in its favour. In fact, Advani acknowledged in his autobiography that BJP’s 2004 election slogans “gave an opportunity to our political opponents to highlight other aspects of India’s contemporary reality — poverty and uneven development, unemployment among the youth, problems faced by farmers, etc., which questioned our claim”.

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Advani’s Bharat Uday Yatra, launched on March 10, 2004, received a tepid response. With everything seemingly falling apart, veterans like Kalyan Singh, who had quit the BJP in 1999 following a spat with Vajpayee, were re-inducted in February 2004 as a last-ditch attempt to revive the party’s prospects. And yet, the BJP was handed a crushing mandate. In Uttar Pradesh, the party was reduced to 10 seats from 29 in the previous election.

First election with only EVMs, mandatory candidate declarations

The 2004 elections saw two historic electoral reforms. First, electronic voting machines (EVMs) replaced the paper ballot. Second, the Supreme Court made it compulsory for candidates to declare their complete assets and liabilities while filing their nomination papers.

EVMs had been used experimentally in Paravur Assembly segment in Kerala in 1982. To facilitate their use, the Representation of People Act was amended in 1989. This election 2004 saw the entire country switch over to EVMs. On March 13, 2003, a Supreme Court judgment made it mandatory for electoral hopefuls to file along with their nomination papers an affidavit declaring “information about their criminal background, assets, liabilities and educational qualifications”. The affidavit was to include information on the assets and liabilities of their dependents too. The Supreme Court had said that getting to know all this information was part of a voter’s “right to know”.

Meanwhile, the report of the Delimitation Commission, headed by retired Supreme Court judge, Justice Kuldeep Singh, would be implemented during the 2009 general elections.

Voting and counting

A four-phase election was held between April 20 and May 10, 2004, while counting started on May 13. Of 67.14 crore voters, 32.19 crore were women and the total turnout was 58.07%. A total of 5,435 candidates were in the fray, including 355 women (45 of these women won). The maximum number of candidates — 35 — fought from the Madras South seat, which was won by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s (DMK) T R Baalu.

The results revealed that the BJP’s seat-share had been reduced to just 138 from 182 in 1999 (NDA won 181 seats this time against the 303 earlier). The Congress 145, Communist Party of India (Marxist) won 43, Samajwadi Party 35, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) 19, CPI 10 and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) nine. Rahul Gandhi made his debut with this Lok Sabha poll. While he contested from Amethi, his mother Sonia fought from Rae Bareli. Both won from their respective seats.

On February 6, 2004, a day before the 13th Lok Sabha was dissolved, many BJP MPs appeared confident about their alliance being voted back to power. However, the results were exactly the opposite. It was later said that Vajpayee had been against early polls, but gave in to the counsel of his colleagues, including L K Advani and then BJP chief M Venkaiah Naidu. Their judgement was perhaps clouded by the party’s victories in Assembly polls.

Manmohan leads UPA

Though its tally was hardly better than the BJP — just seven more seats — the Sonia Gandhi-led Congress moved heaven and earth to form the next government. The timing worked in the party’s favour since it had realised the hard way the value of political alliances.

Left parties played a key role in the formation of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, which comprised over a dozen parties. Due to her past experience — the issue of her foreign origins muddying the waters in 1999 — Sonia put her ambitions aside and gave the alliance’s reins to Manmohan, the economist responsible for bringing liberalisation to India in 1991.

With Sonia as the chairperson of UPA, he took oath as Prime Minister on May 22, 2004. Besides the National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP), framed to ensure the smooth functioning of the alliance, Left parties had a big influence on this government, particularly in the education sector. CPI (M)’s Somnath Chatterjee was elected as the Speaker, though his party was just supporting the alliance from outside.

To give Sonia a rank equal to that of a Cabinet minister, Manmohan appointed her as the chairperson of the National Advisory Council (NAC), created on June 3, 2004. Though she resigned from the post on March 23, 2006, after the issue of office of profit was raised against her, the NAC continued to exist. For coordination among UPA partners, frequent meetings were held to assure the alliance’s smaller constituents that their role remained crucial to the coalition.

UPA government’s reform-oriented programmes

Manmohan initiated several reforms, including the Right To Information Act in 2005 (Vajpayee government had passed the Freedom of Information Act but could not implement it), the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and the Right to Education Act in 2009. The alliance also continued some of Vajpayee’s schemes, including that on national highways.

Meanwhile, Arjun Singh, the Minister of Human Resource Development (now Education), fought within and outside his party, forcing the government to finally implement the 27% reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in admissions to higher educational institutions in 2009. The government also issued instructions to various departments to make their policies inclusive. Even the Department of Public Enterprises was advised to take care of representation of marginalised communities while forming panels for various posts.

Nuclear deal with US, a problems for CPI(M)

A nuclear deal with the United States in July 2008 created problems for the UPA since Left parties supporting the alliance were against it. After the CPI (M) withdrew its support to the alliance on July 9, 2008, the government called a special Parliament session on July 21-22, 2008, to discuss the deal. Though the CPI(M) asked Chatterjee to resign as Speaker — in line with the party’s decision — the 10-term MP refused. Expelled from the CPI(M) on July 23, Chatterjee continued as the Speaker till the Lok Sabha’s term ended in 2009.

Voting on the confidence motion after the withdrawal of CPI(M)’s support to UPA over the nuclear deal was so crucial that an ailing Vajpayee, then an MP from Lucknow, was brought in on a wheelchair. The voting ended in UPA’s favour: 275 ayes and 256 noes.

Fight in BJP for leadership starts

The 2004 poll results brought many setbacks for the BJP in the years to come. Naidu had to resign as party chief after the results and Advani was forced to take charge of the BJP once again. In April 2005, then RSS chief Sudarshan remarked that “age is a factor. L K Advani and A B Vajpayee should step aside and see a younger leadership emerge”.

A major controversy erupted within the sangh parivar after Advani’s June 2005 visit to Pakistan. During his visit, the BJP elder praised Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah, besides calling him a “secular” person and visiting his mazaar (tomb). Advani’s praise for Jinnah nearly cost him his post of the BJP president, but he rescinded his resignation. At the party’s Mumbai meeting in December 2005, Advani finally resigned as party president and was replaced by Rajnath Singh, the former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. However, Advani continued as the Leader of Opposition in the 14th Lok Sabha.

In May 2006, Pramod Mahajan, BJP’s rising star and possibly even the party’s future prime ministerial candidate, was shot dead by his own brother. While 85-year-old Vajpayee, a Lok Sabha member till 2009, decided not to fight the 2009 polls on account of his deteriorating health, 81-year-old Advani’s ambitions saw him contest the next Lok Sabha elections, held in April-May 2009, as its prime ministerial candidate.