parliamentary majority with the support of the opposition Congress Party led by his rival, the former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. In return for her support, Gandhi demanded that a law establishing special courts to try her and her son Sanjay Gandhi be repealed – a proposition that was unacceptable to Charan Singh. Gandhi therefore withdrew her support, forcing Singh to resign. His government lasted 24 days and he never faced Parliament. The convention of appointing a Prime Minister in a hung House but with conditions on time to prove majority was later adopted by President R Venkataraman. Following Charan Singh's resignation, Reddy summoned Chandrashekhar and Jagjivan Ram to Rashtrapati Bhavan to look into the possibility of forming an alternate government. Reddy, convinced that they would not be able to form one, accepted Singh's advice and dissolved Lok Sabha, calling for a mid term election. Singh was asked to continue as the caretaker prime minister till a new government was sworn in after the election. Reddy's decision was met with angry denunciations and protests by members of the Janata Party who even threatened to have him impeached. Although heading a caretaker government, Singh proposed as many as seven ordinances on a broad range of matters from effecting changes in company law, providing state funding of elections and reservation of jobs for the backward classes. Reddy however refused to promulgate the ordinances arguing that such momentous changes could not be made by a caretaker government. Indira Gandhi's return to power (1980–82) In the elections of 1980, Indira Gandhi's party the Indian National Congress (I) returned to power by winning 351 seats in the Lok Sabha. Neither the Janata Party nor Charan Singh's Lok Dal won the 54 seats needed for recognition as the official opposition in Parliament. Indira was sworn in as Prime Minister by Reddy for what would become her last term in office in January 1980. Between 1980 and 1982 President Reddy led seven state visits abroad, visiting the USSR, Bulgaria, Kenya, Zambia, the UK, Ireland, Indonesia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Yugoslavia. At home, as president, he signed an ordinance that gave the new government wide powers to imprison people for up to a year without trial under preventive detention and ordered the imposition of President's rule in nine opposition-ruled states on the advice of the government. Later life and death Reddy was succeeded as president by Giani Zail Singh,