General elections were held in India on 20 May, 12 June and 15 June 1991 to elect the members of the 10th Lok Sabha, although they were delayed until 19 February 1992 in Punjab.
Elections were not held for the six seats allocated to Jammu and Kashmir, nor for two seats in Bihar and one in Uttar Pradesh. Similarly, elections were also delayed in Punjab. Voter turnout was 57%, the lowest to date in an Indian general election.[4]
Background
In the previous elections held 16 months before, the Janata Dal came into power with outside support of the Bharatiya Janata Party, however the BJP withdrew it's support from the government after its Ram Rathyatra was stopped at Samastipur in Bihar, a state ruled by the Janata Dal, whose Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav had the BJP president Lal Krishna Advani arrested on spot. Following the resignation of V. P. Singh, the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress (Indira) provided outside support to a small breakaway faction of the Janata Dal, the Samajwadi Janata Party headed by Chandra Shekhar for a time, but soon withdrew its support. Over 500 million eligible voters were once again given the chance to elect their government.[5] The elections were held in a polarised environment and are also referred to as the 'Mandal-Mandir' elections after the two most important poll issues, the Mandal Commission fallout and the Ram Mandir-Babri Masjid issue.
Mandal-Mandir Issue
While the Mandal Commission report released by the VP Singh government suggested giving 27 per cent reservation to the Other Backward Castes (OBCs) in government jobs, it led to widespread violence and protests across the country with many students from the Forward Caste groups in and around the capital city of Delhi even setting themselves on fire in opposition to increase in reservations. Violence also erupted between Scheduled Caste groups, who opposed increasing reservation for other communities & OBC groups, who supported reservation for their own community. 'Mandir' represented the hallmark of this election, where there was a debate over construction of Ram Mandir at the disputed site of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya which the Hindu right wing Bharatiya Janata Party was using as its major election manifesto. To counter the intense religious polarisation unleashed due to the Ram mandir movement, the ruling Janata Dal heavily campaigned on implementing the Mandal Commission report, which the BJP alleged was a ploy to undermine Hindu unity.
The Mandir-Mandal issue led to numerous riots in many parts of the country and the electorate was polarised on caste and religious lines. With the Janata Dal beginning to fall apart into different splinter groups each supporting a particular caste in a specific state, the Congress (I) managed to make the most of the polarisation, by getting the most seats and forming a minority government.[6]
A day after the first round of polling took place on 20 May, former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated while campaigning for Margatham Chandrasekar in Sriperembudur. The remaining election days were postponed until mid-June and voting finally took place on 12 and 15 June.
Since the assassination took place after first phase of polling in 211 of 534 constituencies and the balance constituencies went to polls after the assassination, the 1991 results varied greatly between phases.[7]Congress (I) was almost wiped out in the first phase, and rode a massive sympathy wave of public grief to sweep the second phase.[5] The end result was a Congress (I)-led minority government supported by the Janata Dal led by P. V. Narasimha Rao, who had previously announced his retirement from politics. While Rao had not contested in the election, he contested in a by-election in Nandyal which he won by a record five lakh votes.
Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab
76 to 126 people were shot dead during campaign on 17 June 1991 in two attacks by Khalistani gunmen in Punjab, an area racked by separatist violence since the 1980s. Police reports said the killings, on separate trains, were carried out by Sikh militants.[8] Similarly, insurgency in Kashmir also saw the mass exodus of Kashmiri Hindus from the Kashmir Valley under threats from Pakistan-sponsored Muslim militants. Due to these insurgencies, no elections were held in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab, a total of 19 Lok Sabha seats.[9] Elections were held in Punjab on 19 February 1992,[10] where INC won 12 out of 13 seats,[11] thereby taking their tally in the Lok Sabha up from 232 to 244.
At the suggestion of Rajiv's widow Sonia, P. V. Narasimha Rao was chosen as the prime-ministerial candidate of Congress (Indira). Rao, who got himself by-elected from Nandyal, secured the outside support of the Janata Dal & Jharkhand Mukti Morcha under controversial circumstances. After Lal Bahadur Shastri, Rao was the second Congress Prime Minister from outside the Nehru-Gandhi family and the second Congress Prime Minister to head a minority government that completed full 5-year term (Indira Gandhi also headed a minority government from 1969 to 1971 following the 1969 split of the Congress party into Congress(O) & Congress(R)).[14]
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