It was for the second time that the much feared number 13 proved to be the end of Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government. The first was in 1996 when the government lasted for just 13 days as Vajpayee failed to garner majority support in the Lok Sabha. In April 1999, three years later, the BJP government fell again when it lost the confidence of the Lower House by a solitary vote – this time after serving 13 months in power.
It was probably the most famous trust vote in the history of Indian Parliament. In a historic development exactly fourteen years ago, on April 17, 1999, the 13-month-old Vajpayee-led NDA government was voted out in the Lok Sabha by a margin of just one vote after its ally, the J Jayalalitha led ADMK withdrew its support from the government. Jayalalitha had consistently threatened to withdraw support if her demands including the sacking of the Tamil Nadu government were not met. While the BJP led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition secured 269 votes, the opposition got 270. No government before had lost its majority by a margin of one vote. Not only did this turn out to be a nail-biting finish, it was also one of the rare moments in Parliament’s history that a Prime Minister was forced to resign from his post. The biggest irony here is that Vajpayee, who held the record of moving the maximum trust motions – in 1996, 1998 and 1999, himself witnessed the narrowest of defeats.
It was around 10.45 am on the tense morning on April 17, 1999, that the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) promising Vajpayee that its MPs would support the NDA government. A short while later, as the House was called to order, and the debate which had gone on for two days, began to wind up. It was time for the BSP leader Mayawati to speak.
She rose and said in a tone which defied the gravity of her pronouncement that she opposed the government. A babble broke out as BSP MPs Arif Khan and Akbar Ahmed applauded and the numbers slowly began to go against the government. The last nails in the coffin were administered by Saifuddin Soz who defied his party, the National Conference, to vote against the government and Odisha chief minister Giridhar Gamang. Despite having been CM for a couple of months, Gamang was yet to resign from the Lok Sabha and used his dubious privilege to vote against the Vajpayee government.
Gamang, who had been a Union minister in successive Congress regimes since Indira Gandhi’s times, was chosen by the Congress President Sonia Gandhi to replace J.B.Patnayak as Chief Minister of Odisha just two months before the confidence motion. Critics remarked, ‘it was a small price to pay for earning the pleasure of his party high command to which he owes his entire political career ever since he first got elected to Lok Sabha in 1971.’
Interestingly, Gamang didn’t utter a single word during the long two-day debate on the confidence motion in the Lok Sabha, but confidently voted against the motion when Lok Sabha Speaker G.M.C. Balayogi finally left it to his ‘good sense’ to decide whether he should vote or not. At that time Gamang remarked, ‘I voted since my party wanted me to vote and my party’s conscience is my conscience.’
A senior leader of Congress party said: “What Gamang did was ‘politically correct’ as he was directed by the party high command to vote against the motion. Though he was made the Chief Minister but he didn’t manage to get the unanimous support from within his party. He voted to please the high command and earn her blessings to run the government.” Though Gamang has been somewhat shy to take credit for his act, Soz has shown no such inhibition. Soz thereafter became the center of a huge debate for his part in bringing down what he termed a “communal” government.
As per the Lok Sabha records, a total of 26 no-confidence motions have been moved against incumbent regimes since 1952. Barring one instance on July 15, 1979, when Morarji Desai resigned after an inconclusive debate, all others were decisively defeated. The first of these was moved against Jawaharlal Nehru in August 1963. The motion, moved by J.B. Kripalani, was defeated by a thumping majority of 347 votes. As PM, Indira Gandhi faced as many as 15 no-trust motions – 12 between 1966 and 1975 and three between 1981 and 1982. She sailed through all of them. PV Narasimha Rao also won a critical vote of confidence on July 29, 1993. He was, however, charged and convicted of bribing the MPs for their support but was subsequently acquitted.
India, during Vajpayee’s time, had established itself as a nuclear power, and there were visible attempts to forge peace with Pakistan. The voters had pronounced their mandate and on the face of it there seemed no apparent reason why the government should fall. In his reply to the no-confidence motion moved in Parliament, Vajpayee had left no stone unturned to defend his government and was equally scathing in his attacks. “Lalu Yadav has contended that if we vacate office, he would put an alternative up in less than a minute. Does not the opposition owe the people an explanation on what the alternative is that is being propped up to displace a government duly elected by the will of the people? If there was a mandate, it was for the NDA and not for the opposition?,” Vajpayee told the House.
He also pulled up the Congress government for levelling allegations that were hurting national interest. “In my public life in the Opposition never has any allegation been made against me that I have acted against national interest. So how can it be that all of sudden I am accused of the same ? Has being in power changed me so drastically ? Does power corrupt to this degree ? If such accusations can be made of me with merely 13 months in power, what of those who have been in power for 40 years?,” he asked. In his concluding remarks, Vajpayee said: “I appeal to the House to pass judgment on my government’s performance. We have served this nation for 13 months and in these 13 months we have given a hint of what we can do if given the opportunity of a full term of 5 years. 13 months are a short period of time, but we have left our footprints on the sands of time in an indelible manner to be preserved for posterity. The people of this nation have made it clear through opinion polls that they want this government to continue. There is no doubt on that fact. I am confident this House will decide in the favour of public opinion.”
However, when the one vote difference did show up on the Lok Sabha’s screens that afternoon, the House was briefly stunned into silence. That is before the Opposition’s cries of delight broke out. In the PM’s seat, Vajpayee took one look at the results and raised his hand to his forehead in a mock salute. “True to its DNA, the Congress destabilised the Vajpayee-led NDA government within 13 months. Vajpayee lost the trust vote by a solitary vote, which was itself questionable, and, unlike UPA 1, there was no cash-for-votes scandal then to ensure the government’s survival,” notes politician and columnist Sudheendra Kulkarni. As one of Vajpayee’s close aides, Kulkarni remembers how heartbroken Vajpayee was on that day. The then Home minister L.K. Advani, also Vajpayee’s senior-most colleague, was equally distressed. He, aided by Pramod Mahajan, had worked several sleepless nights talking to various non-Congress and non-Left MPs for their support.
It was one of those rare moments that political observers saw Vajpayee express sadness over the defeat. Vajpayee, a master orator, soon hit the campaign trail for the 1999 parliamentary elections. “The Congress conspired to defeat my government with a single vote,” he would say at rally after rally across the country. “Now, the single vote of each of you will ensure my victory.” True to his expectations, the results of the elections that were held between September 5 and October 3 1999 (soon after the Kargil war) went decisively in favour of the NDA. The election results brought Vajpayee’s NDA a majority in India’s 545-seat Lok Sabha, with 299 of the 537 seats contested and 41% of the vote. The alliances forged by Vajpayee proved key to the victory.
Though the BJP won 182 seats, only marginally better than the 179 it won in 1998, its allies bagged another 117 seats. The Telugu Desam Party of Andhra Pradesh came back with 29 seats; the Shiv Sena won 15; the DMK of Tamil Nadu won 12. On the other hand, the Congress and its allies won 134 seats and 34% of the vote. The Congress itself, with 28% of the vote, won only 112 seats (down 28 from the last Parliament), its worst since Independence. On October 13, 1999, Vajpayee took the oath of office as India’s PM, heading a 70-member Council of Ministers. It was India’s third election in a little more than three years and the government, which finally lasted a full five year term, brought a much-needed sense of stability.
Fourteen years since then, regional parties have risen to far greater significance. There have been attempts to destabilise, manouvre and even form a separate front. On many occasions, the coalition partners have been found holding the government to ransom. The results of the elections that followed after the April trust vote should have sent a clear message to politicos that the nation prizes stable governance above everything else. The people of India do not like untimely elections thrust upon them; so political parties forming a government should know how to handle and manage a coalition.
The Congress-led UPA looks to finishing its second consecutive term in power, unless the SP or the BSP chooses to pull the plug. Though corruption and policy paralysis is what Manmohan Singh’s second term in office will be best remembered for, it has at least so far succeeded in holding together the coalition, however tenuously that may be. So as India prepares for its next elections in 2014, unlike the Vajpayee government in 1999, performance may not be a parameter that Singh would ask his government to be judged upon.
