Chandra Shekhar, 9th Prime Minister who remained in office for 223 days

When the second general elections were held in 1957, Chandra Shekhar wanted to propel himself to national politics and contested from the Rasra constituency in his home district. However, he lost with a slim margin. But that did not deter him from pursuing his national aspirations. During 1959-62, he served as a member of the PSP national executive.

He began his parliamentary journey in 1962, when he was elected to the Rajya Sabha as the PSP nominee. In 1965, he joined the Congress and became the general secretary of the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) in 1967.

It was in the 1960s that Chandra Shekhar, along with three other leaders – Krishan Kant, Mohan Dharia, Ram Dhan – earned the sobriquet of “Young Turk”. When the Congress split, he remained in the Indira Gandhi-led party faction and became a member of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) and the party’s Central Election Committee (CEC).

However, during the Emergency, the then Indira government put him in jail for 19 months as a political prisoner. His memoir about his days in jail has been published as “Meri Jail Diary” (in Hindi). Subsequently, he left the Congress and became the president of the Janata Party in 1977.

When the Emergency was lifted and the elections were held to the sixth Lok Sabha in 1977, Chandra Shekhar contested from Ballia on the Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD) ticket and defeated the Congress candidate, Chandrika Prasad.

In 1980, he again won from the same constituency, this time on the Janata Party ticket, defeating Jagannath Chaudhari of the Congress and became a member of the seventh Lok Sabha.

During January 6-25 in 1983, Chandra Shekhar undertook a padyatra, called “Bharat Yatra”, from Kanyakumari to Delhi, covering a distance of nearly 4,260 kms.

However, in 1984, he lost to Chaudhari, as the Congress party led by Rajiv Gandhi swept the general elections to win a record mandate. This was the only Lok Sabha election that Chandra Shekhar lost in the course of three decades of his parliamentary journey.

In 1989, Chandra Shekhar contested the elections to the 9th Lok Sabha election as a Janata Dal candidate from two parliamentary constituencies – Ballia in Uttar Pradesh and Maharajganj in Bihar – and won from both seats. In Ballia, he defeated his arch rival Chaudhari of the Congress and in Maharajganj, too, he won by defeating Congress candidate Krishna Pratap. However, after the elections, he retained his home constituency, Ballia, and resigned from Maharajganj.

In the 1989 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress suffered a debacle as its tally plunged to 197 from 404 in 1984. The Janata Dal (143 seats) emerged as the second largest party and it formed a government, headed by Vishwanath Pratap Singh, that was supported by the Left parties and the BJP from outside.

Chandra Shekhar then felt that he should have been the PM as he had a longer association with “Janata” politics (Janata Party and Janata Dal), the principal non-Congress force, than VP Singh. After the Singh government collapsed following the withdrawal of support by the BJP, Chandra Shekhar also left the Janata Dal with 64 MPs and formed his new party Janata Dal (Samajwadi).

On November 10, 1990, Chandra Shekhar formed the government with the Congress’s support from outside, but the grand old party pulled the plug on it in less than eight months.

When the elections were held in 1991 for the 10th Lok Sabha, Chandra Shekhar again contested and won from Ballia, defeating his old Congress rival Chaudhari.

In 1996, Chandra Shekhar contested on the Samata Party ticket and became a member of the 11th Lok Sabha from Ballia.

In 1998, he contested on the Samajwadi Janata Party (Rashtriya) ticket from Ballia and became a member of the 12th Lok Sabha. In 1999 and 2004 too, he won the seat on the same party’s ticket to become a member of the 13th and 14th Lok Sabha.

In all, Chandra Shekhar was elected to the Lok Sabha eight times from 1977 to 2007, barring the 1984-89 period.