BJP moves to rebuild NDA ahead of 2024

The ruling party's recent moves in Maharashtra, Bihar, UP and Karnataka show it is looking to broaden its tent. Driving this strategy is a robust feedback channel and previous experiences with coalition building. But it is not without risks

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To understand the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) rapid political moves across India this week, think back to 1996. That year, sagging under the weight of a raft of corruption scandals and internal defections, the incumbent Congress went into the polls weakened. This allowed the BJP to vault into pole position, becoming for the first time the single-largest party in the Lok Sabha. With unprecedented success in the heartland, Atal Bihari Vajpayee took oath as prime minister (PM) but quickly found that navigating the quicksand of coalition politics was far trickier than the heatand-dust of the campaign trail. For 13 days, the party hunted for allies to push it past the majority mark but to no avail, eventually forcing Vajpayee to resign. By the time the United Front government, formed in its stead soon after, wobbled two years later, the party had learnt its lesson. Though the 1998 elections only gave it 20-odd seats more, it stitched together a coalition, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), that the Opposition was unable to match electorally or politically. And though allies had a substantial say in this first iteration of the NDA between 1998 and 2004, it ensured a stable non-Congress government (of course with one blip, when Vajpayee's government fell by a single vote in 1999, due to the tactics of J Jayalalithaa) for the first time since Independence.

Think also back to 2004. That year, riding high on a string of policy successes and positive ratings of the PM, the BJP called for early general elections.