Narendra Modi has achieved the distinction of becoming only the third Indian Prime Minister after Jawaharlal Nehru and Manmohan Singh to return to office after completing a full term with the results of the 2019 general election being announced on Thursday.
Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister, had led theCongress to victory in the 1951, 1957 and 1962 Lok Sabha elections.
Nehru died in office in May 1964 and Lal Bahadur Shastribecame the Prime Minister. He never faced a general election as he too died inoffice in January 1966 after signing the Tashkent Accord on restoring subcontinentalpeace after the 1965 India-Pakistan war.
Nehru’s daughter Indira Gandhi, who was then the Informationand Broadcasting Minister, became the Prime Minister and led the Congress tovictory in the 1967 general election, albeit with reduced numbers.
Gandhi called elections a year early in 1971 and won adecisive mandate and saw the country win its biggest military victory the sameyear that saw the decimation of the Pakistani Army and the creation of theindependent nation of Bangladesh.
Four years later, fighting off an opposition onslaught forher resignation after an adverse court verdict holding her guilty of electoralmalpractices, Gandhi declared Emergency in 1975, due to which the electionswhich were due in 1976, were not held.
Indira Gandhi lifted the emergency in 1977 and calledgeneral election that saw a conglomeration of disparate parties under theJanata Party umbrella being swept to power.
That experiment lasted a little over two years and IndiraGandhi led the Congress to a resounding victory in the 1980 general election.
Indira Gandhi was assassinated in October 1984 and her sonRajiv Gandhi became the prime minister. He called early elections the same yearthat saw the Congress being returned with a thumping majority, winning 414 ofthe 533 seats where polling was held.
The Congress, however, lost power in the 1989 electionslargely due to the taint of the Bofors gun purchase deal. V.P. Singh became theprime minister of a Janata Dal government that had outside support from theBharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Left. However, the tensions generated overa ‘Rath Yatra’ undertaken by BJP leader L.K. Advani saw the party pulling outits support, which led to the government’s collapse.
The Congress then propped up a dispensation headed byChandra Shekhar but pulled out after a little over 100 days, accusing thegovernment of spying on Rajiv Gandhi.
Elections were called early in 1991, Rajiv Gandhi wasassassinated while on the campaign trail and the Congress rode to power on ahuge sympathy wave.
P.V. Narasimha Rao became the prime minister and served afull term but the corruption taint again saw the Congress losing power in the1996 elections.
The BJP emerged as the single largest party and Atal BihariVajpayee became the prime minister, but the government lasted only 13 days asit could not cobble together the required numbers in the Lok Sabha.
A United Front coalition then assumed office, first withH.D. Deve Gowda and then I.K. Gujral as the Prime Minister.
Not unexpectedly, the coalition experiment lasted just twoyears and elections were called in 1998.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee returned as Prime Minister to head aBJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition that collapsed a yearlater. The BJP, however, retained power in the 1999 elections.
Riding what it believed was a popularity wave prompted byits “India Shining” campaign, the BJP called elections a few monthsearly in 2004 but faced the mortification of being voted out.
Manmohan Singh then became the Prime Minister for the firsttime – and returned to power on May 16, 2009.
Riding a Narendra Modi wave, the BJP achieved majority of282 of the 543 LOk Sabha seats (NDA 336) for which elections were held in 2014and Narendra Modi was sworn in as India’s 14th Prime Minister on May 26.
The NDA-BJP is set to replicate the effort in 2019 andNarendra Modi is al set to be sworn in for a second term.