I am with NDA: Chandrababu Naidu after BJP fails to get majority in Lok Sabha polls
New Delhi/IBNS: TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday cleared he will be attending the meeting of national coalition NDA, which now needs his support mandatorily as Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP failed to get the majority in the Lok Sabha elections.
Addressing his first presser since election results this morning, Naidu said as quoted by ANI, "Today, I am heading to Delhi. After the completion of the election, this is my first press meet before going to Delhi. I am very glad for the support of the voters.
"Ups and downs are common in politics. Many political leaders and parties have been ousted in history. This is a historic election. Even voters from abroad have returned to their hometowns to exercise their votes."
"I am in NDA. I am going for an NDA meeting," Naidu, who is also set to return as the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, added.
Modi on Tuesday returned for a rare third consecutive term in office with his allies, but fell short of an absolute majority for his BJP, in an election that gave a new lease of life to a Congress-led disparate Opposition bloc- INDIA- as the anti-Modi union halted the saffron juggernaut to under 300.
Modi, who is set to be the second Prime Minister after Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to return to office for third consecutive term, had kickstarted the campaign for his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) setting the target for 370 seats and 400 for the NDA alliance.
Quite contrary to the "Abki bar 400 par" or "400 plus seats this time" slogan, Modi's BJP failed to achieve the majority mark (272) on its own, paving way for a return of a coalition government trend after a decade.
In what would trigger the debate of anti-incumbency setting in, Modi's BJP could manage to get to 240 while NDA touched 291, a comfortable figure to run the government but at the mercy of regional parties like .
As a slew of exit polls that gave a clear majority to Modi proved wrong, even in the win of the NDA, the celebrations are louder in the INDIA Bloc after they bagged a higher than expected number of seats.
Though several political pundits, opinion and exit polls had almost written off the Opposition, Congress (99 seats) led INDIA comprising several key regional players in offering a close contest to the incumbent.