13-month roller-coaster government comes to a dramatic end

A motley coalition of 18 parties that came to power on March 19, 1998, riding on its see-saw relationship with the 18-member All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, weathered many storms before finally falling today to internecine squabbling.

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's second stint in office lasted two days shy of 13 months. His first government in 1996 had lasted only 13 days.

The storm that rose from a tea party on March 28 which brought together AIADMK general secretary J Jayalalitha and Congress president Sonia Gandhi gained in ferocity over the last three weeks to dislodge the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government by the narrowest of margins.

Jayalalitha had given an early indication of things to come when she withheld the letter of support to the President, holding up the installation of the Vajpayee government in March last year.

The tea party, hosted by Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy at a luxurious hotel in New Delhi, saw the re-emergence of an alliance that had broken after the 1996 general election and marked the beginning of the end of the Vajpayee government.

The hectic political activity over the last three weeks pushed into the background the government's attempts to consolidate the political gains of the Pokhran nuclear tests, the historic bus ride to Lahore and the successful test-firing of the intermediate-range Agni-II ballistic missile.

The controversy over the dismissal of naval chief Vishnu Bhagwat proved the nemesis of the government as it found Jayalalitha's demand for reinstatement of the ex-admiral, shifting of Defence Minister George Fernandes, and an inquiry by a joint parliamentary committee into the episode difficult to meet.

On March 31, Power Minister P R Kumaramangalam criticised the belligerent AIADMK chief for flouting the coalition's norms and demanded the resignation of the ministers from her party. In response, the AIADMK withdrew from the government and the co-ordination committee and, on April 14, handed over to President K R Narayanan the letter of withdrawal of support from the government.

The Pokhran nuclear tests brought both fame and notoriety to the vajpayee government which till then was finding the shift from the opposition to the treasury benches difficult to handle.

The tests were initially hailed by the entire political spectrum in the country, but when the United States led the Western world in imposing stringent economic sanctions, voices of dissent began to emerge.

Pakistan, however, wasted no time and effort in restoring the balance of power in the sub-continent by exploding its own nuclear devices in the Chagai Hills of Baluchistan within a fortnight.

After taking credit for breaking into the nuclear club, the government took another bold initiative when the prime minister boarded a bus to Lahore to bridge the gap between the two countries.

The historic Lahore Declaration won praise from across the globe as a sincere effort to normalise relations. The "bus diplomacy" consolidated Vajpayee's position as a statesman. As external affairs minister in the Morarji Desai government in 1977-79 too he had made an important contribution in easing tensions between the two neighbouring countries.

Ironically, the government signed off with yet another milestone in the country's defence capability when Agni II, a ballistic missile with a range of 2000km, was successfully test-fired into the Bay of Bengal this week.

Controversies, however, never allowed the government to settle down. A few days before the Pokhran tests, Defence Minister Fernandes stirred a hornet's nest when he spoke of China as India's "potentially biggest threat".

Denials and explanations failed to placate either the uneasy neighbour or an angry Opposition, but as events unfolded, the minister's statement appeared to be a calculated move to justify India's nuclear tests.

Fernandes again brought matters to a head when he dismissed Bhagwat in controversial circumstances, this time describing the officer as a threat to the country's security.

The issue brought the Opposition together to demand a JPC inquiry into the circumstances that led to the sacking of the naval chief and the allegations traded by the two.

The humiliating defeat in the assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi in November 1998 put the government on the back foot as the Opposition cited the results as a reflection on the coalition's performance.

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