End of Congress dominance: the National Front and minority governments (1989-91)

Detail

1. The 1989 election: the Congress loses its majority

• Congress dominance means one party (the Congress) won most elections and ran most governments, at the Centre and in the states, from 1952 until 1989. The opposition was weak and divided.
• In the November 1989 Lok Sabha election, the Congress still won more seats than any other party. But it was far short of a majority. It chose to sit in opposition [2].
• After this, no single party won a majority of its own in the Lok Sabha from 1989 until 2014 (NCERT).
• What came before:
• The Janata Dal was founded in 1988. It was a merger of the Janata Party and smaller centrist opposition parties. V.P. Singh was a main founder [4].
• The Janata Dal was the core of a wider opposition alliance, the National Front [2][4].

2. The National Front government (December 1989 to November 1990)

• National Front: an alliance of the Janata Dal and regional parties, built to defeat the Congress in 1989. One example of a regional party in it was the Telugu Desam Party (TDP). N.T. Rama Rao founded the TDP in March 1982 to remove the Congress from power in Andhra Pradesh [5].
• V.P. Singh became Prime Minister in December 1989.
• Outside support from two opposite sides:
• The BJP on the right and the Left Front (CPI(M), CPI and allies) on the left both supported the government.
• Neither one joined the cabinet. Both only wanted the Congress kept out of power.

• An NCERT cartoon shows Jyoti Basu (Left) and L.K. Advani (BJP) holding up V.P. Singh from either side. The government stood on two props that disagreed with each other.

• Outside support means a party votes for the government in the Lok Sabha but takes no ministries. It carries no collective responsibility for the government (all ministers answer together to the Lok Sabha, Article 75(3)). So it can pull out at any time without paying a price.

• Big decision: the government decided to implement the Mandal Commission report, which gave 27% reservation in central government jobs to Other Backward Classes (OBCs) (§6).

3. Why the National Front government fell (November 1990)

• Chain of events:
• The BJP's Rath Yatra for a Ram temple at Ayodhya was moving across north India.
• L.K. Advani was arrested in Bihar during the yatra in October 1990 (§9).

• The BJP withdrew its support. The government lost its majority.

• Floor test: On 7 November 1990, V.P. Singh lost a vote in the Lok Sabha by 356 to 151 and resigned. Most of the votes against him came from Congress members, but the BJP also voted against him [2].

• Lesson: a government that depends on outside support from rivals who oppose each other falls as soon as one of them withdraws.

4. Chandra Shekhar government (November 1990 to June 1991)

• Split: Chandra Shekhar led a rebel group out of the Janata Dal on 5 November 1990. It became the Samajwadi Janata Party (Janata Dal–Socialist) [3].
• Became PM: He was sworn in on 10 November 1990 with outside support from Rajiv Gandhi's Congress [3].
• Anti-defection angle: At that time the Tenth Schedule (anti-defection law, added by the 52nd Amendment, 1985) protected a "split" by one-third of a legislature party. The 91st Amendment (2003) later removed this split protection. Only a merger backed by two-thirds of the legislature party is now protected.
• Fall:
• The Congress withdrew its support in early 1991.
• Chandra Shekhar resigned.
• The Lok Sabha was dissolved, and a mid-term poll (an election held before the House finishes its normal five-year term, Article 83(2)) was called for 1991.

5. The economic background: the 1991 balance-of-payments crisis

• Balance-of-payments crisis: a country does not have enough foreign currency to pay for imports or repay foreign loans.
• Causes and timeline:
• The Gulf War in late 1990 pushed oil prices up sharply [6].
• India's foreign exchange reserves began falling from September 1990 [6].
• By the end of December 1990, reserves could pay for only about 3 weeks of imports [6].

• India drew US$1.8 billion from the IMF in January 1991. Even so, on 31 March 1991 reserves (not counting gold) covered barely one month of imports [6].

• When the new government took office in June 1991, usable reserves were only weeks away from running out. In July 1991, the RBI pledged gold to raise loans [6].

• Link to politics: weak minority governments (1989-91) could not take hard economic decisions. The crisis set the stage for the 1991 New Economic Policy under P.V. Narasimha Rao (§3).

6. The 1991 election

• Polling began on 20 May 1991. On 21 May 1991, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in a suicide bomb attack in Tamil Nadu while campaigning [7].
• The Congress chose P.V. Narasimha Rao as its leader. He became India's 9th Prime Minister after the June 1991 elections [8].
• Rao's government also began as a minority government.

7. Concept: minority government

• Minority government: a government whose own party or coalition does not have a majority in the Lok Sabha. It stays in power because other parties support it from outside or vote with it issue by issue.
• Constitutional basis:
• The President appoints the PM (Article 75(1)). By convention, the President appoints the person most likely to win the Lok Sabha's confidence.
• The Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the Lok Sabha (Article 75(3)). So a government falls once it loses majority support.
• The S.R. Bommai v. Union of India (1994) judgment held that the proper place to test a majority is the floor of the House, not the Governor's or President's private opinion. The case was about state governments, but the same principle guides the Centre.

Tool	Who moves it	Requirement	If lost
No-confidence motion	Opposition	At least 50 members must support the leave to move it (Lok Sabha Rules); then a simple majority of members present and voting	Government must resign
Confidence motion	Government (or on the President's direction)	Simple majority of members present and voting	Government must resign (V.P. Singh, 1990; Vajpayee, 1999)

• Examples of minority governments:

Period	PM	How it survived
1969-70	Indira Gandhi	Congress split; CPI, DMK and others supported from outside
1979	Charan Singh	Congress support; resigned without ever facing the Lok Sabha
1989-90	V.P. Singh	BJP + Left outside support
1990-91	Chandra Shekhar	Congress outside support
1991 (at first)	P.V. Narasimha Rao	Short of a majority at first; later reached it
1996 (13 days)	A.B. Vajpayee	Resigned before the trust vote
1996-98	United Front (Deve Gowda, Gujral)	Congress outside support

8. From one-party dominance to a multi-party system

• Multi-party system: many parties compete seriously. Votes are spread so widely that no one or two parties win most of the seats. Governments are formed by coalitions (several parties sharing power) or survive as minority governments.
• The decline of the Congress did not produce a new dominant party. Instead power became split among national parties (Congress, BJP, Janata Dal, Left) and strong regional parties.
• No single party won a Lok Sabha majority alone from 1989 to 2014 (NCERT). The 2014 Lok Sabha election ended this run when the BJP won a majority on its own.

Prelims Hooks

• National Front government (1989-90): led by V.P. Singh. It had outside support from both the BJP and the Left Front, and neither joined the cabinet.
• Core party of the National Front: the Janata Dal, formed in 1988 by a merger [4]. It was not the Janata Party of 1977.
• Why V.P. Singh fell: the BJP withdrew support after L.K. Advani's arrest during the Rath Yatra (October 1990). He lost the trust vote on 7 November 1990 [2].
• Chandra Shekhar became PM on 10 November 1990 at the head of the Samajwadi Janata Party, with outside Congress support [3]. He lost office when the Congress withdrew that support.
• Trap: Charan Singh (1979) is the PM who never faced the Lok Sabha. Vajpayee (1996, 13 days) resigned before the trust vote. V.P. Singh (1990) lost a trust vote.
• 1991 crisis: reserves covered only about 3 weeks of imports by December 1990, and the RBI pledged gold in July 1991 [6].
• Collective responsibility to the Lok Sabha comes from Article 75(3). This is why losing outside support brings a government down.
• 91st Amendment (2003) removed the Tenth Schedule's "one-third split" protection, which had made splits like Chandra Shekhar's 1990 breakaway easier.
• No party won a Lok Sabha majority alone from 1989 to 2014 (NCERT).

Mains Points

• Outside support gives power without responsibility (GS-II): Supporting parties shape policy but answer for nothing (BJP and Left in 1989-90; Congress in 1990-91 and 1996-98). This made governments unstable and led to frequent elections (1989, 1991, 1996, 1998, 1999). Reform ideas debated include a constructive vote of no confidence (as in Germany: the House must name the next PM in the same vote that removes the current one), as discussed by the NCRWC, and fixed-term legislatures.
• Political instability and economic crisis are linked (GS-I/GS-III): Two short-lived minority governments (1989-91) matched the 1990-91 balance-of-payments crisis. Reserves fell from September 1990 to only weeks of imports [6]. This shows how coalition fragility can delay hard decisions. Yet the later minority Rao government carried out major reforms, so a minority government is not automatically weak.
• End of the "Congress system" broadened democracy (GS-I): The National Front brought regional parties (TDP and others) and backward-class politics (Mandal) to the Centre. Federal and social diversity gained more voice, at the cost of stability. This laid the base for the later coalition era (NDA, UPA).
• Floor test as the democratic check (GS-II): The 1990 trust vote and the S.R. Bommai (1994) principle both show that majority is tested in the House, not by the President's or Governor's judgement. This protects the parliamentary form when no party has a majority.