If the 50s saw the consolidation of Congress, the late 60s and 70s saw the consolidation of the…

If the 50s saw the consolidation of Congress, the late 60s and 70s saw the consolidation of the non-Congress parties. Although the Congress retained power at the union level in the 1967 elections, the party citadels began crumbling in several states. Opposition parties formed alliances and formed governments in eight major Indian states. Biju Patnaik who formed Utkal Congress in 1970, advocated the theory that future belongs to provincial parties which championed the hopes and aspirations of the people in their respective region. Visions of a federal government comprising representatives from different states began to appear in the political horizon. Rajni Kothari spoke of the dominant party model giving way to a more differentiated structure of party competition. Morris-Jones emphasised that the new situation brought a number of opposition parties fully into the market place, and competition that had previously occurred within the Congress was now brought into the realm of inter-party conflict. The emergence of a viable non-Congress party and its capturing of power at the Centre raised the hope of a two-party system taking shape. But this experiment soon fizzled out with leadership quarrels in the Janata Party.