CHENNAI: The country witnessed too many political changes in quick successions since 1996 general polls. In just two years, it had three Prime Ministers. The first Prime Minister was AB Vajpayee of the BJP, which emerged as the biggest party by winning 161 Lok Sabha seats.
After invited by the President to form government, Vajpayee remained as Prime Minister only for 13 days. He resigned on May 27, 1996 without facing the trust vote, realising that he was not going to win it.
Amidst much anxiety over the political logjam since no party had the necessary numbers to form government, a rainbow alliance of regional parties was created to revive the third front in the country. Many of the members of the erstwhile National Front came together, including TN’s ruling party DMK, and formed the United Front.
With the outside support of the Congress, whose sole objective was keeping the BJP out of power, HD Deve Gowda of Janata Dal (Secular) took charge as Prime Minister on June 1, 1996. He won the trust vote in the Lok Sabha with the support of 141 members of the Congress. But Congress proved an unreliable ally, especially when it was out of power. Sitaram Kesri, the then president of All India Congress Committee, in April, 1997 announced that the party was withdrawing support to the United Front government, citing a flimsy reason that the Cabinet was not consulting them before taking major decisions. So, Gowda could not complete even a year as the Prime Minister.
However, Congress offered to support the United Front government if it changed the Prime Minister. IK Gujral of Janata Dal was chosen as the next Prime Minister by the United Front and sworn in on April 1997.
Meanwhile, the Jain Commission report on the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was submitted. It blamed the then DMK government for being soft towards the activities of the LTTE in Tamil Nadu, which culminated in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. The Congress, in view of the commission’s report, started demanding that Gujral drop ministers from the DMK from his Cabinet. As Gujraj refused to heed, the Congress withdrew support to his government in March 1998.
While this political drama dominated the national scenario, in Tamil Nadu much of the focus was on the riots in Coimbatore at the end of 1997 and the serial bomb blasts in the city in February 1998.
DMK leader M Karunanidhi, who was back as Chief Minister after a massive victory in 1996, had brought many new industries and projects to TamilNadu by leveraging the party’s clout at the Centre .But the bomb blasts, one of which was said to be aimed to assassinate senior BJP leader L K Advani, caused a strong anti-DMK mood across the State.
When the Lok Sabha elections were announced in 1998, the BJP tied up with Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK. PMK and MDMK were other important allies. The AIADMK leader was also booked and arrested in several corruption cases filed by the DMK government. The sympathy of the electorate over this and the sentiments caused by the Coimbatore riots and the serial bomb blasts, helped the BJP-AIADMK alliance in a big way. The DMK allied with Tamil Manila Congress.
When the results were out, the AIADMK-led alliance had won 30 out of 39 seats. The BJP, for the first time in Tamil Nadu, won as many as three MP seats.
At the national level, the BJP won 182 seats, again becoming the largest party in the Lok Sabha, but still lacking majority. Vajpayee returned as the Prime Minister with the support of a set of regional parties such as AIADMK.