[1] The Bharatiya Janata Party, which had won the most seats despite finishing second in the popular vote, formed a short-lived government under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

In July 1995 it was found a former Congress(I) youth leader had murdered his wife and tried to destroy the evidence by stuffing her corpse into a tandoor (clay oven).

In August 1995 the Vohra Report was finally released to the parliament, decrying that a politician-criminal nexus was "virtually running a parallel government, pushing the state apparatus into irrelevance".

[4] Government credibility fell further still when in late 1995 violence significantly worsened in the Kashmir region, and sporadic fighting and ethnic tensions boiled over in Punjab province.

Thus a characteristic of the 1996 elections was a large number of strong regional and state parties declined to form an alliance with any of the three major contenders for government.

[9] The BJP ran a campaign centred around a four-point plan which aimed for probity of public life, self-reliance in the economy, social harmony and greater security.

In the backdrop of the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid, BJP stressed on the role of Hindutva in its vision for India, creating a more Hindu-orientated state by removing the provisions of secularism and making Hinduism the country's state religion, implementing a nationwide ban on cow slaughter, abolishing personal laws of non-Hindus by introducing a uniform civil code and removing the special status of Kashmir alongside construction of the Ram-mandir as its main agenda.

However it drew flak for promising re-construction of the demolished mosque at the disputed site of Ayodhya in its electoral manifesto, leading the BJP to accuse the Congress (Indira) of indulging in Muslim appeasement and fostering Hinduphobia.

[10] The BJP capitalised on the communal polarisation that followed the demolition of Babri Masjid to win 161 Lok Sabha seats, making it the largest party in parliament.

Congress(I) was almost wiped out in its traditional strongholds of Uttar Pradesh & Bihar with many stalwarts like Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav, Jagannath Mishra, Satyendra Narayan Sinha suffered electoral setbacks inflicted by both Janata Dal & BJP.

[13] Following Westminster custom, President Shankar Dayal Sharma invited Atal Bihari Vajpayee as leader of the BJP to form a government.

After Janata Dal leader V. P. Singh refused to become prime minister for a second time, CPI(M) leader and West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu was approached by the National Front to be its prime ministerial face, but the party politburo refused to endorse it (a decision which Basu later criticised as a "historic blunder") in order to affirm its commitment towards establishing dictatorship of the proletariat.

However the Fodder Scam resulted in many United Front members demanding the resignation of Lalu Prasad Yadav, an alliance partner and the then Chief Minister of Bihar.