National Democratic Alliance (NDA): the BJP-led coalition that has governed India since 2014

Overview

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition that has governed India since 2014. Formed in 1998 under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, it is a centre-right alliance built around the BJP plus a shifting cast of regional parties. In the 2019 general election the BJP alone won 303 seats in the Lok Sabha, and its allies added about 50 more — a result that made the alliance dominant while also exposing how lopsided it had become (Times Now).

This profile is about the Indian political coalition. It is not the United States’ National Defense Authorization Act, the annual American defence-spending law that shares the NDA initials, and it is not India’s National Defence Academy, the military training institution near Pune. When Indian politics says “NDA,” it means this coalition.

Formation and the Vajpayee years, 1998–2004

The NDA was established in 1998, spearheaded by the BJP, with Atal Bihari Vajpayee as its inaugural chairperson (India TV News). Its original line-up, as listed by India TV, counted 13 parties: the BJP plus the Trinamool Congress, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), the Samata Party, the Shiv Sena, the Biju Janata Dal, Lok Shakti, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), the Pattali Makkal Katchi, the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Haryana Vikas Party, the Janata Party, and the Tamizhaga Rajiv Congress (India TV News). The coalition’s purpose was to counter the dominance of the Indian National Congress by uniting centre-right and regional parties (India TV News).

The first NDA government did not last: the AIADMK withdrew its support and the government collapsed, but the alliance regained power in 1999 with an expanded mandate (India TV News). The 2004 election brought a setback, attributed to the alliance’s failure to connect with rural voters, and the NDA spent the next decade in opposition (India TV News). Leadership passed from Vajpayee to L. K. Advani, who chaired the alliance until 2014, followed by Amit Shah (India TV News).

Return to power and the Modi years, 2014–2020

The NDA secured victories in the 2014 and 2019 general elections under the leadership of Narendra Modi (India TV News). The 2019 result showed both the alliance’s strength and its imbalance. The BJP won 303 seats, 21 more than its 2014 tally, while the Congress improved only from 44 to 52 (Times Now). The BJP’s 303 seats with a 37.3 percent vote share dwarfed its allies: the alliance’s other parties collectively held just 29 of the seats they contested in 2019, according to Election Commission data reported by ThePrint — a figure that reflects the 2023 line-up’s 2019 performance, not the 2019 line-up itself (ThePrint). The stat-plus-implication is blunt: the NDA’s parliamentary weight rests overwhelmingly on the BJP itself, so the alliance keeps small parties close less for their Lok Sabha seats than for the state-level vote blocs they can deliver (ThePrint).

The NDA’s grip on Parliament’s presiding offices showed the same arithmetic at work. Its candidate Harivansh Narayan Singh of the Janata Dal (United) was first elected Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha in 2018, defeating the Congress-backed B. K. Hariprasad by 125 votes to 105 in the 244-member House, with 14 members absent (Gulf News). He was re-elected on 14 September 2020 by voice vote, after the opposition fielded Manoj Jha but did not press for a counted division (The Hindu). The full story of that contest is covered in the profile of the 2020 Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha election.

Who was in the NDA in 2020 — and who had just left

There is no single published roster of NDA members for 2020, so the honest picture is the 2019 contesting line-up minus the two big exits. In 2019 the alliance’s Lok Sabha seat-winners were the BJP (303) plus the Shiv Sena (18), the Janata Dal (United) (16), the Lok Janshakti Party (6), the Shiromani Akali Dal (2), Apna Dal (Sonelal) (2), and one seat each for the AIADMK, the All Jharkhand Students Union, the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party, the Mizo National Front, and the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (Times Now). Those components sum to 352; one further seat, the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha’s, is sometimes counted to reach the widely cited alliance total of 353 (see openItems).

Then the churn began. The Shiv Sena ended its 35-year alliance with the BJP in 2019 after the BJP refused its demand for a 50:50 power-sharing arrangement — an equal split of portfolios and a shared chief minister tenure — and Uddhav Thackeray instead formed Maharashtra’s first Maha Vikas Aghadi government with the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party on 30 December 2019 (The Hindu). In September 2020 the Shiromani Akali Dal, one of the BJP’s oldest allies, quit the NDA over three farm bills, days after its minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal resigned from the Union Cabinet in protest (Moneycontrol). The Janata Dal (United), by contrast, was still firmly inside the alliance in September 2020: its MP Harivansh was the NDA’s candidate for Deputy Chairman, proposed by BJP president J. P. Nadda (The Hindu).

Party	2019 Lok Sabha seats	Status by end of 2020
Bharatiya Janata Party	303	Leading party
Shiv Sena	18	Left NDA in 2019
Janata Dal (United)	16	Still in NDA
Lok Janshakti Party	6	Still in NDA
Shiromani Akali Dal	2	Left NDA, September 2020
Apna Dal (Sonelal)	2	Still in NDA
AIADMK, AJSU, NDPP, MNF, RLP	1 each	Still in NDA

(The table distills the Times Now 2019 party-wise tally and the exit reporting cited above.)

How the alliance actually works

The NDA’s most unusual feature is structural: despite its size and longevity, it operates without a formal governing body (India TV News). Coordination runs through the BJP’s leadership and through periodic meetings of alliance leaders — such as the July 2023 gathering in New Delhi, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that assembled 38 parties (The Indian Express). The informality cuts both ways: it lets the BJP absorb dozens of small parties without a constitution to renegotiate, but it also means exits are unilateral and abrupt, as the Sena’s and the Akali Dal’s were.

That 38-party figure also reveals the alliance’s real logic. Of the 37 parties besides the BJP at the July 2023 meeting, 10 had not even contested the 2019 Lok Sabha election, and of the 23 that did, only eight won a seat — nine seats between them, on a little over 2 crore votes (The Indian Express). The BJP’s answer, in effect, is that small parties matter for the assembly segments and caste blocs they influence, not for their own parliamentary numbers. The NDA thus works less like a coalition of equals and more like a hub-and-spoke system: one dominant national party, ringed by regional spokes that each deliver a state, a district cluster, or a community.

	NDA (2019)	UPA (2019)
Lead party	BJP — 303 seats	Congress — 52 seats
Largest allies	Shiv Sena 18, JD(U) 16, LJP 6	DMK 23, NCP 5
Alliance shape	One dominant party + many small allies	One weakened anchor + regional partners
Outcome	Government	Opposition

Frequently asked questions

What is the National Democratic Alliance? The NDA is the BJP-led coalition of Indian political parties formed in 1998. It has governed India since 2014 under Narendra Modi, winning re-election in 2019 with the BJP alone taking 303 Lok Sabha seats and its allies adding about 50 more.

Who founded the NDA and when? The BJP formed the alliance in 1998 ahead of the general election, with Atal Bihari Vajpayee as its first chairperson. Its original line-up counted 13 parties, including the Shiv Sena, the Shiromani Akali Dal, and the AIADMK. The alliance was built to counter the dominance of the Indian National Congress.

How is the NDA different from the UPA? The NDA is led by the BJP and is centre-right; the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was led by the Congress. In 2019 the NDA’s lead party won 303 seats against the Congress’s 52, giving the NDA a commanding majority and leaving the UPA in opposition.

Which major parties left the NDA around 2020? The Shiv Sena left in 2019 over a power-sharing dispute in Maharashtra, and the Shiromani Akali Dal quit in September 2020 over the Centre’s farm bills, days after its minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal resigned from the Union Cabinet. The Janata Dal (United) remained in the alliance through 2020.

Does the NDA have a formal constitution or governing body? No. Reporting on the alliance notes that its structure lacks a formal governing body; coordination runs through the BJP’s leadership and periodic meetings of alliance leaders, such as the 38-party gathering in New Delhi in July 2023. The informality lets the BJP absorb small parties without renegotiating a constitution.

Timeline

• 1998 — The BJP forms the NDA with regional allies; Vajpayee becomes first chairperson (India TV News).
• 1999 — After the AIADMK withdrawal collapses the government, the NDA regains power with an expanded mandate (India TV News).
• 2004 — The NDA loses the general election and enters a decade in opposition (India TV News).
• 2014 — The NDA returns to power under Narendra Modi (India TV News).
• 2018 — Harivansh Narayan Singh elected Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman, 125–105 (Gulf News).
• 2019 — The NDA wins re-election; BJP 303 seats, allies about 50 more (Times Now).
• 2019 — Shiv Sena leaves the NDA and forms the MVA government in Maharashtra (The Hindu).
• 2020-09-14 — Harivansh re-elected Deputy Chairman by voice vote (The Hindu).
• 2020-09 — Shiromani Akali Dal quits the NDA over the farm bills (Moneycontrol).
• 2023 — NDA meets in New Delhi as a 38-party alliance (The Indian Express).

What this profile does not claim

• It does not present a complete dated NDA membership roster for 2020; none exists in the sources read, so the 2020 picture is reconstructed from the 2019 line-up minus documented exits.
• It does not resolve whether the 1998 coalition counted 13 parties (India TV) or 24 (ThePrint); both figures are reported and the discrepancy is flagged.
• It does not assert a clean 353-seat decomposition for 2019; the verifiable components sum to 352, with the last seat depending on small-party classification.
• It does not treat the chairperson succession (Vajpayee → Advani → Amit Shah) as independently corroborated; it rests on a single tier2 source.
• It does not cover the NDA’s 2024 general-election result, which is outside this profile’s 2020-centred scope.
• It does not confuse this coalition with the U.S. National Defense Authorization Act or India’s National Defence Academy.

Sources

• India TV News — Chunav Flashback: When Vajpayee-led BJP formed 13-party NDA and Sonia Gandhi entered politics in 1998 (tier2; formation, founding list, chairpersons, 1999/2004, no formal governing body, 2014/2019 wins)
• Times Now — Lok Sabha Election result 2019: Partywise final seat tally for 17th Lok Sabha (tier2; 2019 party-wise seat tally)
• ThePrint — Why BJP’s keeping its 37 NDA allies close, even though they notched just 29 Lok Sabha seats in 2019 (tier2; 38-party alliance in 2023, EC data on allies’ 2019 seats and vote share, JD(U) and SAD details)
• The Indian Express — In 38-party NDA, besides BJP’s 303, only 8 won total 9 seats in last Lok Sabha polls (tier1; July 2023 meeting composition, small allies’ 2019 record)
• The Hindu — NDA candidate Harivansh Narayan Singh re-elected as Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman (tier1; 2020 re-election by voice vote)
• Gulf News — NDA’s Harivansh Narayan Singh elected as Rajya Sabha deputy chairman (tier2; 2018 election, 125–105, Shiv Sena “apolitical” backing, AAP boycott)
• Moneycontrol — Shiromani Akali Dal quits BJP-led NDA over contentious farm bills (tier2; SAD exit, September 2020, minister’s resignation)
• The Hindu — Shiv Sena at 60: Fragmentation of Maharashtra’s ‘Tiger’ (tier1; Shiv Sena’s 2019 exit, 50:50 demand, MVA government)