The Great Indian Elections Part-I [2009]

The 2009 General Election was a watershed event in the history of independent India. The Indian National Congress won five more seats than their last election tally and party spokespersons and friendly media personalities were about to cry out from roof-tops about the ‘brilliant’ Congress victory and how they would stake their claim to form the Government with the ‘support’ of the Third Front. But then, as a last minute spoiler, the Nationalist Congress Party, miffed at Sharad Pawar not being offered the Cricket Ministry walked out with their 10 MPs, thus effectively leaving the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) as an alliance between Karunanidhi’s DMK and the Congress (the remaining parties had left the UPA and were in talks with the Third Front constituents to form a Fifth Front). The Congress lost their only bridge to the Third Front. 

Dr Manmohan Singh officially declared himself the Prime Ministerial candidate of the UPA and called the NDA’s Advani a sore loser. However Dr. Singh’s effigies were burnt in several places as Congress supporters wanted Rahul Gandhi to be the next PM. Party spokesperson Manish Tiwari in a CNN-IBN show even let slip that Manmohan was just an accidental PM laying the groundwork for Rahul. We don’t know what ‘groundwork’ this is anyway. Rahul Gandhi meanwhile declared that he wanted to get married to his long time Colombian girlfriend and have a ‘good time’ before becoming PM. He insisted that Dr. Singh warm the chair for a few more years.

The NDA led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had a disastrous election as people were confused as to who their prime ministerial candidate was—Advani or Modi. A lot of pamphlets were distributed in different states that actually had Modi as the Prime Ministerial Candidate and some others had Advani. These confused voters did not show up to vote and hence the BJP candidates lost their deposits in many constituencies. Advani’s Ahmedadabad constituency was peculiar in it’s result. Mallika Sarabhai, who contested as an independent, won by a double digit margin thus effectively ending Advani’s political career. Varun Gandhi however contested and won in Pilibhit and was being considered a possible prime ministerial candidate for the next election, thus invoking the wrath of Modi. 

The NDA had effectively broken up and the BJP had requested for a CBI enquiry on who could have played spoilsport in the debacle? K N Govindacharya, the former ideologue and the man who made the famous “Mukhota” speech was considered a prime suspect. His disappearance over the last few years led to people believing it could be him. 

The Third Front was still trying to figure out which parties constituted the Third Front. CPM’s General Secretary Prakash Karat declared himself the leader and called for a meeting of the Third Front leaders in New Delhi just after the results were decalred. Mayawati, Jayalalitha, Deve Gowda and Chandrababu Naidu showed up for the meeting. Mayawati insisted that she be made PM else she would goto the Fifth Front. Jaya wanted Karunanidhi to be put behind bars as a precondition to support the alliance. Never mind that Karunanidhi was on his deathbed. Deve Gowda’s insisted that he be made President and the Bangalore Airport named after his son H D Kumaraswamy (who was killed in a mass shoe throwing incident in his constituency of Bangalore Rural). Chandrababu Naidu could not bargain much as TDP had split into TDP (Naidu) and TDP (NTR Jr) and the latter had won all the TDP’s seats in AP. The Left Front itself was in a terrible mess with Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, secretly contesting Lok Sabha elections as an independent from Calcutta South and winning. He immediately resigned as CM of Bengal and from the CPM and it was rumored that Mamta Bannerjee was joining the CPI or CPM as a possible compromise candidate for Chief Ministership. The Bengal Assembly has since been in suspended animation. Orissa CM, Naveen Patnaik did not come to the meeting as he was still waiting for Sharad Pawar to show up for the joint rally in Bhubhaneshwar. The Naveen Patnaik led BJD lost the assembly and Lok Sabha polls in Orissa and last heard was in talks with the BJP to re-enter the NDA. 

The Fourth Front led by Lalu Yadav-Ram Vilas Paswan and Mulayam Singh meanwhile were clearly in a celebratory mood. Lalu had won only 4 seats in Bihar, Paswan had won 2, but the Samajwadi Party (thanks to Amar Singh’s rigging) had won close to 250 seats. The Samajwadi Party (SP) did not even contest that many seats, but then Amar Singh’s work had ensured that constituencies in countries such as Iran, Pakistan, and Bangladesh were part of the final Election Commission notification. Amar Singh himself had won an imaginary landslide election victory from Tehran North by over 80 million votes. This improbable result, Mulayam and Amar Singh claimed was a vindication of their anti-computer and anti-English campaign. Lalu, Amar Singh, Mulayam, and Paswan were on their way to Rashtrapathi Bhavan when they were intercepted by Sharad Pawar’s cavalcade of cars. Pawar offered to make Amar Singh the next chairperson of the ICC and a judge in the Cannes Film Festival in return for the support of the SP for Prime Ministership. Mualyam wanted his son Akhilesh Yadav as Home Minister and Amar Singh insisted on his good friend Amitabh Bachchan as Deputy Prime Minister. Pawar agreed, much to the chagrin of Lalu and Paswan, who stormed out of Amar Singh’s car and declared they, would form a Fifth Front. 

Amitabh Bachchan had just then completed writing his blog about how he would never contest elections again and how he wanted to be PM in 1984, but his plans were scuttled by the Rekha scandal. Ram Gopal Varma then wrote a blog to endorse Bachchan’s candidature for Prime Ministership in the 1984 elections. Aamir Khan wrote on his blog that Shahrukh Khan would definitely not be PM in his lifetime. 

Chiranjeevi’s Praja Rajyam Party meanwhile was renamed Film Rajyam Party and won a comfortable victory in Andhra Pradesh in alliance with the TDP (NTR Jr). After the results, Chiru announced at a press conference the launch of what he called a Non-Congress, Non-BJP, Non-Third and Fourth Front Front. The media dubbed it as the Fifth Front. Lalu and Paswan called up Chiru during the press conference and made a speech via mobile phone declaring their support for the Fifth Front. ‘Captain’ Vijayakanth’s DPDK also affirmed it’s support for this alliance even though DPDK came a cropper in the election with ‘Captain’ being booted out of the Chennai Central Lok Sabha constituency. Last heard, ‘Captain’ and MDMK Chief, Vaiko were in talks with emissaries of the Sri Lankan Government to contest elections from the Jaffna Peninsula. 


Disillusioned with so many fronts, the Citizens for Peace and Justice led by Teesta Setalvad decided to register her organization as a political party. She was unanimously elected General Secretary and Javed Akthar was made the official party lyricist and spokesperson. He was asked to counter the Congress Campaign of ‘Jai Ho’ for the next election in 2014. Their main plank and ideology was the Gujarat Riots of 2002 and the disqualification of Narendra Modi as an Indian Citizen. They enlisted Varun Gandhi’s support for their cause as by then the Modi-Varun Gandhi contest had already begun and it was proven that Varun Gandhi’s (in) famous speech wasn’t him at all. Infact even the person in the CD was someone else. It was a clear case of a high tech crime. 

What happened next will be in Part-II?