The results have not come as a surprise since several opinion polls before the elections had predicted a hung Parliament ... The UF constituents have on the whole come a cropper having barely crossed the 100-seat mark ...
The three major highlights of these elections are: (a) the failure of the BJP and its partners to secure an absolute majority in the 543-member Lok Sabha despite strenuous effort (and the massive publicity drive ... ) to project the BJP front as the most viable formation capable of providing a 'stable government with an able Prime Minister ...; (b) the incapacity of the Congress to achieve a breakthrough in terms of preventing the BJP from winning more than 235 seas with the help of the 'Sonia factor' ...; (c) the virtual liquidation of the Janata Dal from the Indian political landscape. At the same time it is not possible to ignore the other significant features of the poll outcome like the remarkable sweep of the AIADMK-BJP alliance in Tamil Nadu almost reversing the clean sweep of all the 39 seats by the DMK-TMC-CPI front in the 1996 elections, and the stunning reverses that the BJP and its ally Shiv Sena suffered in Maharashtra ...
Throughout the election campaign which by all accounts was bereft of any substantive issue ... the BJP went to town with one specific slogan - that of stability ... The Congress also took the cue from the BJP with Sonia Gandhi asserting that only the party she was campaigning for could provide the much necessary stability. Questions like 'stability for what and for whom?' being conveniently ignored, both the BJP and the Congress gave the impression that by stability they mean one-party centralised rule ... Only the UF provided a different kind of stability to our polity as was brought out by its 18-month rule at the Centre ...
It is a different matter that the importance of this kind of stability for our country was not effectively highlighted by the UF leadership in the course of the campaign ..
... Even before the electoral process was set into motion and BJP changed its tactics and went all out to befriend those who had not been close to it in the past. As a result of such an endeavour it was able to rope in quite a few Congress personalities ... into the party on the one side and forge poll understandings, alliances or seat adjustments with several regional outfits ... Of the 250 seats won by the BJP front in these elections only 170 have been secured by the BJP alone, the remaining 80 odd seats coming from its allies which are definitely strong regional parties of consequence ... The success of the BJP at the hustings signifies in reality the triumph of federalism and does not necessarily imply a return to one- party rule at the Centre.
Much has been written about the anti-incumbency factor ... Only the factor failed to work at all in Punjab, Tripura, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi.
But the factor was in operation in full force throughout the country against the United Front because of its lack-lustre performance at the Centre. Moreover, the UF's failure to publicise even the modest achievements of its government cost it quite dearly ... The electorate's refusal to endorse the BJP's activities in the two States it has been in power for quite some time -Maharashtra and Rajasthan - establishes the hollowness of its claim of providing a stable, viable and effective government at the Centre. This had earlier been provided also in the collapse of its government in Gujarat where it had a two-thirds majority in the State Assembly but could not hold on to that majority .... Of course, in Maharashtra, it was (a) the unity of Dalits and Muslims reflected in the RPI-Congress-Samajwadi front, and (b) the organizational capability of Congress stalwart Sharad Pawar which played a key role in ensuring the defeat of the Shiv Sena- BJP combine. At the same time the BJP suffered in a large measure due to the arrogance of power ..
The elections also revealed that the Sonia factor could not work wonders for the Congress ... The party's failure to win a single seat in its once impregnable bastion of UP and its dismal record in Bihar - the two most populous States of the Hindi heartland - were a clear testimony of Sonia's inability to checkmate the saffron advance (which was sought to be arrested only by Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party in UP and Laloo Prasad Yadav's RJD in Bihar ... All the Sonia proteges - Arjun Singh, Satish Sharma, N.D. Tiwari, Shiela Dixit - suffered humiliating defeats, the only exception being K. Natwar Singh ... In fact the Sonia campaign in some States also indirectly helped the BJP to consolidate itself. Basically it was the disunity in the ranks of the anti-BJP, secular forces which provided to be a boon for the BJP all over the country ...
The Left ... has itself to blame for its poor poll performance. Once again it remained confined to its pockets of influence.
Overall, what cannot be lost sight of is the significance of the BJP's progress from its two-seat strength in the Lok Sabha in 1985 ...
Whatever the reasons for its electoral success, the BJP has been given the mandate to form a government at the Centre even if it has failed to secure absolute majority in the 543-member Lok Sabha. The fractured nature of the verdict does not convey the electorate's confidence in either the Congress or the United Front; rather, larger sections of the people have reposed that confidence in the BJP. The country has had the experience of minority governments ... There is no reason why there cannot be a similar minority government headed by the BJP at the Centre. To subvert the mandate in the name of checking the advance of the Sangh Parivar and fighting its communal ideology would actually result in strengthening the RSS hardliners ... The UF has a bounden responsibility to abide by the democratic verdict ... That will help them restore their image ... and win back the public confidence they have lost at present.
