National Democratic Alliance (India)

Encyclopedia : N : NA : NAT : National Democratic Alliance (India)

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is a coalition in India. It is led by the Bharatiya Janata Party and had 13 constituent parties at the time of its formation in 1998. The convenor of NDA is George Fernandes, and its honorary Chairman is former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

The NDA formed the Government in 1998, which collapsed within a year due to the AIADMK pulling out, but it won the 1999 elections and formed a stronger majority. The NDA governed under Prime Minister Vajpayee for a full five years hence, and was widely expected to win the 2004 elections. But the BJP, the chief party lost too many key seats along with the major allies and the Alliance could not bid for power. Former Deputy Prime Minister and BJP chief Lal Krishna Advani heads the NDA as Leader of the Opposition.

Currently, the other parties in the NDA are:

The Telugu Desam Party gives it outside support. Several of the smaller parties have pulled out of the NDA in the course of its five year term, the latest being the DMK, the PMK and the MDMK which, along with the Indian National Congress formed the "Democratic Progressive Alliance" (DPA) in Tamil Nadu, and became a part of the ruling United Progressive Alliance in the centre. MDMK has since quit DPA. BJP made this to support their last government but after the government many parties have taken their support back See also: List of political parties in India.

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.