Account for the legal and political factors responsible for the reduced frequency of using Article 356 by the Union Governments…

Article 356, a device for imposing President’s Rule, was used often before the 1990s to dismiss state governments on partisan grounds. Its reduced use by Union Governments since the mid-1990s is due to legal and political changes.

Legally, the S.R. Bommai v. Union of India (1994) judgment laid down strict guidelines for Article 356 invocation and made it subject to judicial review. It required the President to be satisfied, on objective material, that the state government could not be carried on in accordance with the Constitution, and treated the Sarkaria Commission’s 1988 recommendations on federalism and procedural safeguards as persuasive guidelines, not binding law. It also held that majority must be tested on the floor of the House, not in the Governor's chamber, and that the Governor’s report alone was not conclusive. The Court also held that an unconstitutional order could be invalidated, and that the Court could then restore the dismissed government and revive a dissolved Assembly, so the Assembly should not be dissolved before Parliament approves the proclamation. Rameshwar Prasad v. Union of India (2006) further restricted arbitrary use, emphasising that the President’s satisfaction must rest on objective material and that dismissal without constitutional grounds was impermissible.

Politically, the shift to coalition governments from 1996 to 2014 made unilateral dismissal politically costly. The rise of regional parties and hung assemblies reduced the Union’s dominance over states, while federal front politics meant that dismissing a state government could destabilise the centre’s own parliamentary support. The Supreme Court’s activism in policing constitutional boundaries reinforced this restraint. Its use has not vanished, however—e.g., Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand (2016), both reversed by the courts, and Manipur (2025).

Thus, the decline reflects a shift from majoritarian centralism to a more judicially checked, coalition-sensitive federalism.