Political history of India after independence:-
On August 15, 1947, India became a territory within the democracy, with Jawaharlal Nehru as first Prime Minister. acrimony between Hindus and Muslims led the British to partition British India, creating East and West Pakistan, where there were Muslim majorities. India became a republic within the democracy after promulgating its constitution on January 26, 1950.
Prime Minister Nehru governed India until his death in 1964. He was also succeeded by Lal Bahadur Shastri, who also died . The power passed to Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister from 1966 to 1977. In 1975, beset with deepening political and economic problems, Mrs. Gandhi declared a state of emergency and suspended many civil liberties. Pursuit Seeking a mandate at the polls for her policies, she called for elections in 1977, only to be defeated by Moraji Desai, who headed the Janata Party, an amalgam of five opposition parties.
In 1979, Desai's Government fall aparted. Charan Singh formed an interim government, which was followed by Mrs. Gandhi's return to power in January 1980. On October 31, 1984, Mrs. Gandhi was assassinated, and her son, Rajiv, was chosen by the Congress . His government was brought down in 1989 by allegements of corruption and was followed by V.P. Singh and then Chandra Shekhar.In the 1989 elections, although Rajiv Gandhi and Congress won more seats in the 1989 elections than any other single party, he was unable to form a government with a absolute majority.
The Janata Dal, a union of opposition parties, was able to form a government with the help of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the right and the communistic on the left. This loose alignment collapsed in November 1990, and the government was controlled for a short period by a breaking away Janata Dal group supported by Congress (I), with Chandra Shekhar as Prime Minister. That coalition also collapsed, resulting in national elections in June 1991.
On May 27, 1991, while political campaigning in Tamil Nadu on behalf of Congress (I), Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, apparently by Tamil radicals from Sri Lanka. In the elections, Congress (I) won 213 parliamentary seats and put together a coalition, returning to power under the leadership of P.V. Narasimha Rao. This Congress-led government, which served a full 5-year term, initiated a gradual process of economic relaxation and reform, which has opened the Indian economy to global trade and investment. India's domestic politics also took new shape, as traditional conjunctions by caste, creed, and ethnicity gave way to a plethora of small, regionally based political parties.
The final months of the Rao-led government in the spring of 1996 were spoil by several major political corruption scandals, which conduced to the worst electoral performance by the Congress Party in its history. The Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged from the May 1996 national elections as the single-largest party in the Lok Sabha but without enough potency to prove a absolute majority on the floor of that Parliament.
Under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the BJP coalition lasted in power 13 days. With all political parties wishing to deflect another round of elections, a 14-party coalescence led by the Janata Dal emerged to form a government known as the United Front, under the former Chief Minister of Karnataka, H.D. Deve Gowda. His government lasted less than a year, as the leader of the Congress Party withdrew his support in March 1997. Inder Kumar Gujral replaced Deve Gowda as the consensus choice for Prime Minister of a 16-party United Front coalition. In November 1997, the Congress Party in India again withdrew support for the United Front.
New elections in February 1998 brought the BJP the largest number of seats in Parliament--182--but fell far short of a absolute majority. On March 20, 1998, the President inaugurated a BJP-led coalition government with Vajpayee again serving as Prime Minister.
