NEW DELHI: Ahead of the 2024 General Elections, the BJP is planning to garner support of smaller parties and allies who once formed part of the NDA. Negotiations are reportedly going on between the Telugu Desam Party, the Shiromani Akali Dal, the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, the Hindustani Awam Morcha and the Vikassheel Insaan Party.
However, the party has decided to focus on Bihar where Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has convened an opposition meeting in Patna on June 23. It has decided to send party president JP Nadda and Union Home Minister Amit Shah to the state.
BJP sources said the party was trying to get LJP leader Chirag Paswan back into the NDA fold.
They feel that only he can take forward the legacy of his late father, Ram Vilas Paswan. Talks are also on with former Union minister Upendra Kushwaha as well as other smaller parties like Mukesh Sahani’s Vikassheel Insaan Party and Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha. Majhi’s son, Santosh Suman, resigned from the Nitish Kumar’s cabinet recently. Only last month, Manjhi had met Amit Shah, leading to the speculation.
In Uttar Pradesh, SBSP supremo OP Rajbhar, who has of late been praising Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, may join the NDA very soon.
The TDP left the NDA in 2018 and the SAD, one of the earliest allies of the BJP, in 2020. TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu met Shah for the first time in five years in New Delhi in the first week of June after leaving the alliance. Nadda was also present at the meeting which lasted about an hour.
SAD leaders claimed that no one from the BJP had reached out to them as yet but their options were open for alliances.
