In May 1996, former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee quit after heading a 13-day government. He resigned without taking a confidence vote. He told the Parliament that his party would serve as a strong Opposition after his resignation.
The Narendra Modi government will face a no-confidence vote on Friday. The BJP is confident of passing the vote as it has a majority in Lok Sabha.
Vajpayee 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.
A few other factors were responsible for his defeat, the most significant among them being the Bahujan Samaj Party’s surprise decision to vote against the government and the revolt of National Conference MP Saifuddin Soz. But Vajpayee was done yet. He spearheaded the BJP back to power a few months later, and when the Opposition brought up another no-confidence motion against his government in 2003, it won by an overwhelming majority of 312 to 186 votes.