Punjab polls postponed a day before voting

Who: India's Election Commission, which postponed Punjab's vote; President R. Venkataraman, who the same day invited Congress leader P.V. Narasimha Rao to form the next government; the Congress, which had objected to voting in Punjab; the BJP and Akali Dal (Mann) candidates; and the armed Sikh groups (Kharku formations), which UPI calls "militants".

What: At about 3 a.m. on Friday, June 21, 1991, the Commission postponed voting for Punjab's parliamentary and Assembly seats, due the next day, until the end of September. It said a free and fair poll was not possible. UPI reports that the campaign had killed at least 50 people, 24 of them candidates; The Tribune later put the number of candidates killed at 29. Less than a week earlier two trains had been attacked and 75 passengers shot dead. UPI describes candidates campaigning with assault rifles and armed groups imposing their own curfew on polling day.

Reactions split. Congress had argued that violence made the vote a mockery. The BJP, which had stayed in the contest, called the postponement an undemocratic method adopted on Congress's advice. The secretary of the Akali Dal (Mann) said it would anger candidates and others sympathetic to the armed groups, and warned that Punjabi youth would be alienated from the mainstream.

Where: Punjab, for all its Lok Sabha and Assembly constituencies. The decision was announced from New Delhi.

Why it mattered: Punjab went without an elected government for another eight months. It voted in February 1992, under President's rule that had been in place since 1987. Most Akali Dal leaders stayed out, only 21.6 percent of voters cast a ballot (67.6 percent in 1985), and Congress under Beant Singh won 87 seats and formed the government, according to The Tribune.