With the BJP falling short of securing a majority on its own in the Lok Sabha, TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu and Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal (United) supremo Nitish Kumar have suddenly become two most important political figures whose actions will be keenly watched until the formation of a new government.

Both the TDP and the Janata Dal (U) are the partners of the BJP in the NDA alliance and but both of them are considered mercurial leaders with a mass following as has been demonstrated by them in the elections.

Naidu, who contested the Lok Sabha and the Assembly polls in Andhra Pradesh in alliance with the BJP and the Jana Sena party, has won a substantial number of Parliamentary seats in the state while Nitish’s JD (U) has secured a dozen seats in Bihar.

Naidu has been a ‘kingmaker’ on many occasions in the past. In 1996, when the electorate delivered a fractured mandate in the Lok Sabha polls, Naidu, as the convenor of the United Front, propped up the H D Deve Gowda government with outside support from Congress. He also helped the formation of the I K Gujaral government.

In 1999, Naidu contested the Lok Sabha polls in alliance with the BJP and secured 29 seats in united Andhra Pradesh. He supported the then Atal Bihari Vajpayee government which was short of the majority mark. In fact, with 29 seats, TDP was BJP’s biggest ally although it did not join the government.

In 2014 too, Naidu contested in alliance with the BJP and joined the Modi government, only to leave the alliance in 2018 ahead of the Assembly polls in Andhra Pradesh.

A veteran of social justice politics in Bihar, Nitish was a minister in the NDA government, led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Nitish remained a senior partner in the NDA in Bihar and was the BJP’s biggest ally in 2009, winning 20 seats in the state when the saffron party did poorly at the national level.
Nitish’s politics in the last decade have surprised not only his detractors but his ardent supporters as well. In 2014, he broke away from the NDA protesting the rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and contested the Bihar Lok Sabha polls alone. He won only two seats. Following this, he joined hands with Lalu Prasad for the 2015 Assembly elections and together they swept the polls.

Within two years, however, he broke away and joined the NDA again and the alliance bagged 39 of the 40 seats in Bihar.

However, after the JD(U) fared poorly in the 2020 Bihar Assembly polls despite the alliance winning the elections, Nitish became increasingly uncomfortable with the BJP and broke the alliance in 2022 to form a government with the RJD. But just months ahead of the 2024 polls, he again joined the NDA, ditching the INDIA bloc after playing a pivotal role in stitching the Opposition alliance.