Yeddyurappa resignation a throwback to 1996 vote
NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged as the single-largest party in the assembly elections in Karnataka this week, and staked claim to form the government. There was an alternative in place. The Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular) had come together in a quick post-poll arrangement and claimed they had the majority in the House. The governor Vajubhai Vala still decided to invite the BJP’s legislative leader, BS Yeddyuruppa, triggering a political-legal storm that resulted in Yeddyurappa taking oath on Thursday, only to resign on Saturday afternoon. There are clear differences, but 22 years ago on the national stage, the BJP had emerged as the single-largest party and Atal Bihari Vajpayee was invited to form what is famously known as the 13-day government.
CONTEXT
The Lok Sabha elections were held five years after prime minister PV Narasimha Rao ushered in economic reforms, four years after the demolition of Babri Masjid, and months after the so-called Hawala scandal (where the Rao government implicated leaders from across parties, who later got acquitted).
The BJP declared Atal Bihari Vajpayee as its prime ministerial face. Riding on the promise of change, being a “party with a difference”, aggressive nationalism, and its Hindutva agenda, at a time when the Congress was in disarray, the BJP emerged as the single-largest force.
It won 161 seats, compared to 140 by the Congress. But the regional parties and the Left held the key.
SIGNIFICANCE
The 13-day Vajpayee experiment was significant for several reasons. One, for the first time, India had a prime minister who came from a staunchly Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh background, and had never been a part of Congress’s mainstream politics. The government did not last but this generated sympathy — at least in urban India, among the middle classes — for the party they felt was being unfairly kept out of power. Two, while elevating the BJP to the top, the brief duration also highlighted to the party the need to become more accommodating of allies, moderate its agenda, and become a big-tent formation. They used this lesson in 1998, when their government lasted 13 months with a wider set of allies, and in 1999, when the Vajpayee government was to go on to serve its entire five-year term. Three, it opened up the question of the President’s role in choosing a stable government. While Sharma stuck to convention and invited the single-largest party, two years later his successor KR Narayanan decided that he would only invite a leader when he was convinced that he had majority and thus asked for signatures of all supporting MPs.
And finally, for the antiBJP parties, the 1996 lesson was that if they came together, they could keep the BJP out.