No trust motion: 3 times when no-confidence motion led to fall of Indian government

In Independent India’s history there are three instances when no-confidence motion led to the fall of Central governments.

Janata Dal leader VP Singh was the prime minister from 1989 to 1990. His National Front coalition, which was propped up by Left parties as well as the BJP to keep the Congress out of power, managed to rule for just 11 months before the saffron party withdrew support over the Ram temple issue. Singh lost the no confidence vote on November 10, 1990. His government needed 261 votes to survive. He secured 142.


Seven years later in 1997, Deve Gowda, the Janata Dal leader was propelled to prime ministership after the 1996 general elections, which dealt a decisive blow to the Congress but also left no other party with enough seats to form a government. That was when Gowda was chosen to lead the United Front coalition government with Congress support on June 1, 1996. However, his fall came almost as abruptly 10 months later, when the Sitaram Kesri-led Congress withdrew its support. In a no-confidence motion taken up on April 11, 1997, Gowda’s 13-party coalition succeeded in bagging just 158 of the 545 seats in the Lok Sabha.

90s certainly was a time of fickle tie-ups in India and no surprise that all three no confidence motions that led to fall of governments took place in that decade.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a BJP veteran, faced two no-confidence motions through his tenures as prime minister, the first of which his government lost by a single vote on April 17, 1999, after the Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK withdrew support.