After his party fell short of a majority in the Lok Sabha and needed unwavering support of its alliance partners to form and run the next government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi mention NDA (National Democratic Alliance) 19 times in his 72-minute speech addressing leaders of the victorious coalition.
Modi called the NDA “not a collection of some parties for the sake of power” as he took a swipe at INDIA bloc, a grouping that the Congress formed with a number of parties with the aim of defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the parliamentary election that concluded on June 1 and whose results were declared on June 4.
The NDA stood, Modi said, on the shoulders of stalwarts Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the BJP, Parkash Singh Badal of the Shiromani Akali Dali, Balasaheb Thackeray who founded the Shiv Sena, George Fernandes and Sharad Yadav, both from the Janata Dal-United (JDU).
He said these leaders “sowed this seed…that has become a tree”.
In the middle of India’s national election, the NDA completed 26 years of its current avatar on May 15 — having been formed in 1998. In his speech, Modi reminded NDA leaders that no other alliance has stood the test of time for a quarter of a century.
The story of the original NDA
They say history repeats itself — mostly because it is forgotten in the first place. It certainly did in the case of the NDA.
The first time the NDA came into being was in 1983. Indira Gandhi was the prime minister and her government had run through more than half of its term. The political outfits were itching to oust her party in the next parliamentary election due for 1985.
But the Opposition parties were divided and struggling to find new grounds to stand on, particularly after they failed to follow the mandate that the people gave them in 1977, splintering into various groups and falling as a ruling entity. This brought back Indira Gandhi’s Congress — then called Congress (I) — back to power in 1980. Her government sacked non-Congress governments across the country.
During these tumultuous times, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS), the political offspring of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), was eager to find a new iteration after its merger with the Janata Party of 1977 brought an forgettable result. After the 1980 Lok Sabha election, the BJS emerged in the avatar of the BJP led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
The birth of NDA, and a premature death
That the Opposition parties wanted to take on the Congress (I) collectively was the dominant idea in the camp. But the experience of the Janata Party was too fresh to trust each other. One coalition was, however, born by the efforts of newly sworn-in chief ministers — Farooq Abdullah of Jammu and Kashmir, NT Rama Rao (Telugu Desam Party founder) of Andhra Pradesh and Ramkrishna Hegde of Karnataka. They named their coalition the United Front.
The United Front had nine parties including J&K National Conference, the TDP, the Janata Party, Lok Dal (Karpuri Thakur) and former Deputy PM Jagjivan Ram’s Congress (Jagjivan).
Jat farmer leader Chaudhary Charan Singh — the grandfather of current NDA constituent Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Jayant Chaudhary — had led the rebellion against the Janata Party in 1979 to take oath as the prime minister. He subsequently renamed his Janata Party (Secular) as Lok Dal, which split further — one section became Lok Dal (Karpuri Thakur).
Charan Singh’s faction was called Lok Dal (C). Charan Singh was keen on forming a new coalition with the BJP, whose leader Vajpayee had his apprehensions about allying with the former PM in a formal coalition again. But Charan Singh was persuasive. He persisted with his proposal from early 1982 (Vajpayee’s BJP having rejected the offer at its February 1982 convention) to August 1983.
Finally, an agreement happened and the coalition of the two parties was born. It was named the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). But Vajpayee’s apprehensions came true. The coalition partners spoke different political languages and by August 1984, both Vajpayee and Charan Singh were saying that they were not sure if their parties would contest the next national election as the NDA.
The assassination of Indira Gandhi in October 1984 anyway didn’t give the Opposition parties or their fledgling coalition any chance of contest. A huge sympathy wave saw the Congress, now led by Rajiv Gandhi, win 415 Lok Sabha seats in the 1984 polls. It was the last time that the Congress won a majority of its own in a parliamentary election, and also the last time the Lok Sabha saw a single-party majority until the Modi wave catapulted the BJP to power in 2014, when it won 282 seats in the 543-member House.