Building bridges for 2024 Polls, BJP extends NDA meet invite to old and new friends

Ahead of the monsoon session of Parliament, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will chair a meeting of the expanded National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in Delhi on July 18, an invitation for which has been extended by BJP president J P Nadda to the current and the new allies being brought on board by the ruling party at the centre in preparations for the Lok Sabha elections next year.

At least two parties from Bihar- Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) and former Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi’s HAM- have confirmed the receipt of the invite for the meeting at Delhi’s Ashoka Hotel at 5 pm on Tuesday.

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Paswan broke away from the NDA in the 2020 Assembly Polls in the state while Majhi quit the alliance in 2018.

The letter sent by Nadda to Paswan and Manjhi while extolling the performance and achievements of the Modi government acknowledges the role of the allies “as important partners of the NDA that strengthens the alliance and contributes towards country’s development journey.”

Union Minister of State Home Affairs Nityanand Rai also met Chirag Paswan in Delhi on Friday requesting the Bihar MP to attend the meeting.

Apart from the smaller NDA allies in the Northeast, the Delhi meeting is also likely to be attended by new entrants to the NDA like the breakaway faction of the NCP led by Ajit Pawar and Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena.

From Tamil Nadu, three parties AIADMK led by former Chief Minister E Palaniswami, Tamil Manila Congress leader G K Vasan and PMK’s Anbumani Ramadoss have been invited.

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However, the contours of BJP’s alliance in Andhra Pradesh remain a little fuzzy. The party has had a good working relationship with Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSRCP ostensibly the reason why uncertainty continues to loom over whether BJP would explore a larger pre-poll alliance with Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena and Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP.

The renewed attempts to rebuild the NDA comes in the wake of opposition unity attempts for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections which started with the Patna plenary on June 23. The next round of the Opposition meeting is scheduled to be held in Bengaluru later this week.

Since assuming power at the centre in 2014, BJP has lost allies in many states including Bihar, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and Punjab. As the countdown to the next Lok Sabha elections begins, BJP has sought to re-calibrate its strategy in reaching out to regional and sub-regional parties to match the opposition optics and also to compensate for potential losses in regions it performed well in the last elections.