National Democratic Alliance

Introduction
The National Democratic Alliance, commonly known as NDA is a coalition of political parties in India. It was led by the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP). It was established in the year 1998 with 13 constituent parties at that time. The then convener of NDA was Mr. Sharad Yadav, and its chairman was the former Prime Minister of India Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The other prominent faces holding positions of relevance in the NDA were Mr. Lal Krishna Advani (presently leader of opposition in Lok Sabha); Jaswant Singh (presently leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha); and Charanjit Singh Atwal (presently deputy speaker in Lok Sabha).

Structure of NDA
The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), does not have a formal governing structure, like an executive board or politburo. This is due to the uncertain nature of political alliances in India. The various issues like seat-sharing in elections, allocation of ministries and Parliament related issues are thus taken care of by the leaders of individual parties. As there are many parties in an alliance with different ideologies, so the disagreement and split voting among the allies is a common case.

Current Position of NDA
At present the NDA has 8 constituent parties. The senior party leader and the prime ministerial candidate of BJP Mr. L.K. Advani had recently announced to retain Mr. Sharad Yadav (of Janta Dal United) as the convener of NDA, due to deteriorating health of Mr. George Fernandes (the current convener). Mr. Advani had taken this decision after consultation with other important party leaders and various partners of NDA.

In a recently held meeting of NDA at the residence of Mr. Advani, it was decided to retain Mr. Vajpayee as the chairman of the alliance. It was done in an effort to put an end to all the speculations raising head for quite some time. According to NDA spokesperson Smt. Sushma Swaraj, the specialty of this meeting was that, it was the first meeting in the history of NDA, in which all NDA chief ministers, heads of all the constituent parties, and leaders in both the Houses viz Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha had participated.

Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) of Uttar Pradesh, led by Mr. Ajit Singh, had only recently joined NDA. This may prove beneficial for BJP in the forthcoming general elections to the 15th Lok Sabha. These elections are scheduled to be held in five phases in different states across the country, starting from April 16, 2009 and ending on May 13, 2009. The list of the parties, which at present are a part of the National Democratic Alliance are as given below: