The electoral debacle of the UF, an alliance of regional parties professedly committed to secularism, social justice and federalism, is in effect a defeat of the third alternative. In 1996, when the Left together with the regional parties led by the Janata Dal, decided to form the UF to give the country a government despite a fractured  mandate, most political observers laughed it away as a loose unprincipled conglomerate of regional satraps, with nothing in common but a lust for power ...

... The UF Government during its 18-month tenure did some good work ... It did provide a "clean government" ... And yet the Front got a solid drubbing. Future analysts may attribute several reasons for the failure of this experiment, but the fact is that it could not meet the aspirations of its voters. For instance, the UF Government remained busy in disproving its critics and endear itself to the class in whose perception there are only two parties - the BJP and the Congress. This section ... is not willing to give any space to any other encroachers on their territory. And encroacher the UF certainly was in the sense that the voters who gave the UF over 190 seats in 1996, were opposed to both the Congress and the BJP and had expected the Front to be different from both.

The Front, however, kept balancing itself in being half-Congress and half-BJP. The oft-repeated slogan of fighting the "communal forces" was brushed under the carpet during its 18 months in office, what with the first UF Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda paying obeisance to leaders like Bal Thackeray and the second UF Prime Minister as well as their mascot Ram Vilas Paswan seeking the BJP and its allies' help to win their seats.

The Front's other raison d'etre was federalism. Even the Left parties, earlier screaming hoarse about implementing the Sarkaria Commission report, rescinded on their commitment.

And above all, social justice ... became a dirty word for most Front leaders. One senor leader said, "We were never for social justice, our stress is on social change" ..

Despite all the efforts to put up a semblance of unity by Front leaders, the fact that they were divided and confused on the basic issues, reached home ...

Alternatively ... the UF and the Congress come together again. For, as former Prime Minister V.P. Singh has said, in a fractured mandate any party which can mobilise the numbers has an equal right to rule. However, the Front and the Congress apparently have too many problems to come together and if it is done it will be too cosmetic to carry any conviction.

The emerging scenario is that while the regional parties of the Indo-Gangetic plains professing social justice, are gathering under the Congress umbrella, their southern and north-eastern, counterparts are seeking BJP cover. Thus whether the Vajpayee Government stays in power or falls sooner or later, the UF is all set to be doomed. And historians can well sit down to write the epitaph for federalism.                                           (Source: The Pioneer, 12 March, 1998)

The Janata Dal, the flagship of the UF, have been wiped out from the political map of the country in the 1998 general elections ... Since the party had significant presence only in three states of the country, with Karnataka being the main hope this time, the trends this time hint at total decimation of JD. Amid the ruins, the few survivors in the Dal ... were former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda ... and I.K. Gujral who carries the stigma of winning on Akali-BJP support.

The other Dal heavyweight ... S. Jaipal Reddy, has returned to Parliament, not on the strength of his party but for the blessings of A.P. Chief Minister Naidu Another Dal stalwart Ram Vilas Paswan has been propped up by the BJP-Samata combine in Hajipur ...

Party President Sharad Yadav himself has lost to his betenoire Laloo Yadav.

Of all the three states, the party expected to perform best in Karnataka, as in Bihar ... Deve Gowda is being punished by the voters for trying to take the Dal in his own hands, to which he was an outsider till very lately.

In Orissa, the Dal was identified solely with late Biju Patnaik and even under him the party had got only four seats in 1996, of which he won two himself. With Biju dead, the party had all but finished in Orissa.

After his demise, the Dal split and the people of Orissa found in the BJD-BJP alliance a new alternative to the Congress ..

That left out Bihar, once the strongest fortress of the Dal. There it looked invincible till ... Laloo Prasad parted company and floated his Rashtriya Janata Dal against which the Dal, the Left fought on all seats. The doom was writ large on the wall.

Moreover, its performance under the Deve Gowda-Ram Vilas Paswas-Sharad Yadav trio did not cover itself with any glory on the twin issues with which the party was identified - social justice and secularism.

... Sharad Yadav may be reduced to another ... Subramaniam Swamy, just holding on the electoral symbol 'wheel' and distributing tickets all over the country ... As for Deve Gowda, he may have to retire to Hassan for good and Paswan might have to look for greener pastures elsewhere.                                                                                              (Source: The Pioneer)