THE REPUBLICof seats won by small regional parties. They had only held altogether 58
seats earlier, but now they had captured 155. In terms of its spread the
Congress still remained the only national party holding seats in more than
ten federal states while the BJP is mainly represented in five states in
northern and western India, Uttar Pradesh with 52 seats being its major
stronghold.
Narasimha Rao committed a serious political mistake when he did not
heed the advice of the Congress state unit of Tamil Nadu which wanted to
break its alliance with the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
(AIADMK) party of Chief Minister Jayalalitha and team up with the
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party which was expected to rout
the AIADMK in the state elections which were held at the same time as the
federal elections. The Congress state unit then broke away from the
national party and its ministers in the central cabinet resigned, among
them commerce minister Chidambaram who later on emerged as India’s
new finance minister. The AIADMK was wiped out both at the state and
the federal elections. The rebel Congress state unit (Tamil Maanila
Congress, TMC) captured 20 parliamentary seats in Tamil Nadu and its
ally, the DMK, 17. These 37 seats swelled the ranks of the regional parties
whose total of 155 seats have been mentioned above. Had Narasimha Rao
backed the change of alliances in Tamil Nadu he would have been
supported by these 37 parliamentarians. Having missed that chance he
could still have formed a government if he had made a determined bid to
find partners for a coalition. But the old aversion against coalitions
prevailed. Instead Narasimha Rao wrote a letter to the President, Dr
Shankar Dayal Sharma, indicating that the Congress would ‘tolerate’ a
National Front government. This letter reached the President too late. He
had already invited the BJP to form a government. The BJP had opted for
Atul Bihari Vajpayee as its candidate for the post of prime minister. He was
known to be a moderate who could attract the support of other parties. In
fact, some regional parties had pledged to support him even before the
President had asked him to form a government. But the number of
parliamentarians supporting him was insufficient. He would have required
about 70 seats more to control the Lok Sabha. He nevertheless took up the
challenge and became prime minister for a few days. There was the odd
chance that more representatives of small parties might join him once they
were tempted by sharing the BJP’s power. It is said that strenuous efforts
were made to this effect, but nobody jumped on the bandwagon. This is
quite remarkable in view of the earlier record of Indian parliamentarians in
this respect. Finally Vajpayee resigned even before he had to face a vote of
no confidence.
Now the President had to turn to the National Front, but before it
could form a government it had to present a candidate for the post of
prime minister. The National Front found it very difficult to agree on a