Majority in legislatures does not necessarily contribute to the stability of the state Government in India. Discuss. (1992)
A ministry survives only while it commands the House, so a majority looks like a guarantee of tenure. Indian state politics has repeatedly broken that inference. Majorities have been eroded by factions, bought by rivals and overridden by the Union. Stability turns less on arithmetic than on party cohesion, the conduct of the Governor and Speaker, and the pull of the national high command.
Factionalism inside the majority
- Paul R. Brass, in Factional Politics in an Indian State (1965), showed the Uttar Pradesh Congress to be a federation of patronage-driven factions; Rajni Kothari‘s “Congress system” absorbed dissent inside the dominant party rather than in opposition.
- The outcome was churn without defeat. Andhra Pradesh had four Congress Chief Ministers in 1978–83, and the slighting of its leadership fed N. T. Rama Rao‘s 1983 sweep. Karnataka’s Congress won 178 of 224 seats in 1989 yet ran through Veerendra Patil, S. Bangarappa and Veerappa Moily in one term.
- The pattern is bipartisan: Uttarakhand had three BJP Chief Ministers in 2021.
High-command culture
From the 1970s Indira Gandhi made Chief Ministers Delhi’s appointees rather than the legislature party’s choice. A majority then belongs to the party, not to a Chief Minister removable through “observers” and a sealed cover. The party stays in office; the government does not.
Defection and the market in legislators
- After 1967 the crossings of Gaya Lal in Haryana gave India the phrase “Aaya Ram Gaya Ram”; in 1980 Bhajan Lal took most of his Janata ministry into the Congress.
- The Tenth Schedule (52nd Amendment, 1985) and the 91st Amendment (2003), which deleted the one-third split, ended retail defection but not the market, which found new routes:
- Mass resignation — toppling elected governments in Karnataka (2019) and Madhya Pradesh (2020).
- A split claiming to be the party — Maharashtra 2022; in Subhash Desai (2023) the Court faulted the Governor’s floor-test call yet could not restore a Chief Minister who had resigned.
- Two-thirds “mergers” — Goa’s Congress legislators in 2019 and 2022.
- Speaker’s delay — after the Supreme Court’s three-month direction of 31 July 2025, the Telangana Speaker in December 2025 cleared five of ten switched MLAs for want of proof.
The Union and the Governor
Before S. R. Bommai (1994), Article 356 was used against governments with intact majorities: the Janata government dismissed nine Congress ministries in 1977 and Indira Gandhi dismissed nine in 1980, while Governor Ram Lal dismissed Rama Rao in 1984 despite his majority. Bommai made the floor test decisive, but timing stays with Raj Bhavan, as Devendra Fadnavis‘s 80-hour ministry in Maharashtra (2019) showed.
Counter-view
A majority resting on a cohesive party with a dominant leader or cadre discipline has delivered long tenures: the Left Front in West Bengal (1977–2011), the BJD under Naveen Patnaik in Odisha (2000–24), the BJP in Gujarat since 1998. Anti-defection law has also made mid-term collapse rarer than in 1967–71. Yet even Gujarat saw Shankersinh Vaghela‘s revolt of 1995–96 unseat a BJP majority.
Conclusion
A majority is necessary but not sufficient for stability. Numbers become durable government only with institutionalised leadership selection inside parties, a neutral arbiter of defection — the permanent tribunal suggested in Keisham Meghachandra Singh (2020) — and a Governor bound strictly by the floor.