INDIA's Hindu nationalist government resigned yesterday after a record low 13 days in office, unable to cobble together a majority in parliament. It will be succeeded by a Centre Left coalition later this week.
Mr R.D. Deve Gowda, chief minister of the southern state of Karnataka, heading the United Front coalition party will succeed the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajapyee, of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the BJP, who chose to resign rather than face a vote of no confidence in parliament.
During a two day scalding of the Hindu nationalists by the opposition parties in the Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament), Mr Vajpayee (69), a genteel poet and statesman, declared. "I have an aversion to the kind of politics that is being practised today. I want to quit politics, but politics will not quit me."
Soon after, Mr Vajpayee pushed his way through a crowd of BJP supporters gathered outside the bullring shaped parliament and delivered his resignation to the Indian president, Mr Shankar Dayal Sharma. Mr Vajpayee's term was the shortest of any prime minister in India's 49 years of independence.
President Dayal Sharma said.
Mr Uowda would be sworn in off June 1st and would have 11 days to prove his party's parliamentary majority.
Mr Gowda, who is not an MP and the first prime minister from Karnataka, told newsmen that he would return to the state capital Bangalore to resign as chief minister and sort out the leadership issue in his state. He will have to be elected to parliament within six months of becoming prime minister.
Mr Gowda's United Front, an alliance of 13 Communist and low caste parties with 190 MPs, some 80 MPs short of a majority in the 545 member parliament, has been promised support by the Congress party and a host of smaller, regional parties which refused to back the BJP's sectarian politics.
Mr V. N. Gadgil, the Congress party spokesman yesterday said that with 136 MPs, his party would not be part of the United Front government but would support it from the outside, helping it in passing legislation.
Several Congress MPs, however, said the United Front coalition party, riven with internecine rivalries, contradictory policies and united only in getting rid of the BJP government, would crumble once it assumed office and prescribed early elections as the only way out of this impasse.
Nearly 50 Front MPs from the two Communist parties were opposed to privatisation and closing down the mammoth, loss making public sector while the centrist Janata Dal with 43 MPs espoused just the opposite.
The Congress party, on the other hand, without whose support the front could not survive, launched India's five year old economic reforms. It is dedicated to pursuing them and has made that a condition for its parliamentary support.
Meanwhile, analysts say the BJP, although unable to cobble together a majority, had profited the most after the elections in which no clear winner emerged.
Two days of turbulent debate in parliament in the run up to Mr Vajpayee's resignation, broadcast live over state run television and watched by millions, was aimed at a larger audience with early general elections in mind.
Senior BJP members admitted they were targeting "floating" voters by projecting a liberal image and playing down their fundamentalist, non secular credentials in anticipation of elections which, most parties appear imminent.
All opposing parties admitted that 13 days in office had provided the Hindu nationalists with the exposure they needed to make the final bid for power in the near future.
