On 17 April 1999, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coalition government led by prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee failed to win a confidence vote in the Lok Sabha (India's lower house) by a single vote due to the withdrawal of one of the government's coalition partners – the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK).

The general secretary of the AIADMK J. Jayalalithaa, had consistently threatened to withdraw support from the ruling coalition if certain demands were not met, in particular the sacking of the Tamil Nadu government, control of which she had lost three years prior to her arch rival M. Karunanidhi.

The BJP accused Jayalalithaa of making the demands in order to avoid standing trial for a series of corruption charges, and no agreement between the parties could be reached leading to the government's defeat.

The main opposition league was led by Sonia Gandhi's Indian National Congress, the long-traditional centrist dominant party in India.

Sonia Gandhi was a relative newcomer to the INC (having been elected to the presidency in 1998) and her leadership had recently been challenged by Marathi INC leader Sharad Pawar, on the grounds of her Italian birth.

This led to an underlying crisis within the INC that persisted during the election and was capitalised upon by the BJP, which contrasted the "videsi" (foreign) Gandhi versus the "swadesi" (home-grown) Vajpayee.

The 1991, 1996, and 1998 elections saw a period of consistent growth for the BJP and its allies, based primarily on arousing Hindu sentiments around the Ayodhya dispute, which culminated into large-scale Hindu-Muslim riots in the wake of the 1992 demolition of Babri Masjid.

It also underwent political expansions in terms of cultivating stronger and broader alliances with other previously unaffiliated parties which were opposed to Congress hegemony but not ideological aligned with the BJP; and regional expansion which saw the NDA become competitive and even the largest vote takers in previously Congress dominated areas such as Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Assam.

One Senior BJP figure commented in the aftermath "It will certainly be a government of stability...I expect that Mr Vajpayee, with all his experience, will be able to handle our coalition partners.