Thirteen days: Vajpayee resigns rather than face a vote he'd lose

The 1996 Lok Sabha election produced a fractured result: the BJP was the largest single party but far from a majority, and no obvious coalition commanded one either. President Shankar Dayal Sharma invited Atal Bihari Vajpayee, as leader of the largest party, to form the government, and he was sworn in as Prime Minister on 16 May 1996.

Vajpayee's government spent its thirteen days in office trying and failing to persuade enough regional parties to back it. On 28 May 1996, before the Lok Sabha voted on the confidence motion, Vajpayee rose in the House, delivered a speech defending his government's record, and announced he was going to Rashtrapati Bhavan to resign rather than let the vote proceed.

It remains the shortest tenure of any Indian Prime Minister. A United Front coalition, with H. D. Deve Gowda as Prime Minister and Congress support from outside, took office in Vajpayee's place — the first of two short-lived governments before fresh elections in 1998 returned the BJP with a workable coalition.