The results of the
2016 Indian election was the end product of the weakening of the dominant Indian National Congress (INC), which has dominated the country's politics since independence in 1947. The government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had done little to persuade voters to support the party or other members of the United India Alliance (UIA). Despite India's economic growth and large strides to alleviate the desperate poverty faced in some states, the Singh government became increasingly tied to institutional corruption with feckless responses to large numbers of MPs being investigated or convicted of crimes. The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its National Movement for Progress (NMP), while also (but not to the extent of the INC) being tarred with the brush of scandal, stood to gain from the inability of the INC to police itself.
Singh's government had fallen to a minority after UIA partners, like the All-Indian Trinamool Congress (AITC) left or outside support evaporated. The BJP, however, were unable to convince enough of the Workers' Front (WF), the smallest electoral alliance in the Lok Sabha, to support a no-confidence vote by the time Singh suffered a massive heart attack in June 2015. While surviving, Singh was left weak and in no condition to continue to lead the country. The INC selected Robert Vadra, the husband of Priyanka Gandhi (daughter of former PM Rajiv Gandhi and granddaughter of Indira Gandhi), to lead the party, a move greeted with derision as further proof of the Gandhi-Nehru family's control over the party.
Vadra and the INC partially reversed their slow electoral decline as a result of sympathy for the party following Singh's resignation and excitement about the new, young (Vadra was only 46 upon assuming office) prime minister. However, the stench of scandal remained in New Delhi and the All-India Party (AIP) under anti-corruption crusader Arvind Kejriwal began to cause concern among the main two electoral alliances that it could persuade other minor parties to support it as it began to spread nationally.
By the time of the election, polls indicated that India would return an even smaller UIA minority and possibility of prolonged negotiations to get one group to command the confidence of 272 members of the Lok Sabha.
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The shocking result, a UIA majority, stunned the political landscape. Post-election analysis revealed that the primary beneficiary of the AIP was, paradoxically, the UIA, as the "throw the bums out" vote that would have went to the BJP or regional parties was instead divided just enough to allow the INC to win many seats by extremely thin margins. The disintegration of the WF over the life of the previous parliament similarly played a large role in keeping the INC in power. However, with unaffiliated regional parties like the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (AIADMK)
—now the third-largest group in parliament as a result of nearly sweeping the state of Tamil Nadu
—and AITC becoming larger players on the national stage, it is up to Vadra and BJP leader Sushma Swaraj to see if they can be integrated into the two main camps or if 2016 will be the last general election in the world's largest democracy to return a majority government.