How Coalition Politics Works in India
India has been governed by coalition governments for most of the period since 1989. Of the twelve coalition governments formed between 1977 and 2024, eight were "minority coalitions" — where the leading party or coalition depended on outside support to survive. Four were "oversized coalitions" — where more parties joined the government than were strictly needed for a majority.
The current NDA government (2024–) represents a new technical category: the first "surplus majority coalition without a majority party" in Indian parliamentary history, as political scientist Eswaran Sridharan described it in his post-election analysis for CASI. The BJP has 240 seats — 32 short of a majority — but its NDA alliance totals 293.
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| Representational Image: How Coalition Politics Works in India |
India's coalition politics emerged from the collapse of Congress dominance, the rise of regional parties, and the FPTP electoral system's tendency to produce hung Parliaments when votes are distributed among many parties. The Janata Dal era (1989–1991), the United Front period (1996–1998), and the UPA governments (2004–2014) all illustrated different models of coalition management.
What all had in common was the core dynamic
that CASI expert Sridharan identifies: India's coalitions are unusually large (six
to twelve parties in the ministry plus additional outside supporters) because
India's federal diversity produces a large number of regional parties with
state-specific interests, and because FPTP creates incentives for pre-election
coalition formation rather than post-election bargaining.
What You Need to Know
- The
2024 NDA coalition consists of BJP (240 seats) plus over 30 ally parties
combining for 53 additional seats (total 293); the three pivotal partners
are TDP (Andhra Pradesh, 16 seats), JD(U) (Bihar, 12 seats), and Shiv Sena
(Maharashtra, 7 seats); these three together with BJP's 240 precisely
reach the 272-seat majority threshold.
- CASI
expert Eswaran Sridharan categorises the 2024 government as "a
surplus majority coalition without a majority party" — a technically
new configuration in India's 12-coalition history; it is expected to
operate more like Modi's previous majority terms than like the unstable
minority coalitions of 1989–2004 because no partner is individually
pivotal.
- TDP's
concrete demands as coalition condition for joining NDA: special financial
support for Andhra Pradesh (which lost Hyderabad as capital city after the
2014 bifurcation); infrastructure investment for Amaravati (the state
capital being constructed); NDA parliamentary committee chairmanships; and
development grants; these have been substantially accommodated in the
2024–2025 Union Budget.
- JD(U)'s
Bihar demands: railway projects and connectivity for Bihar; AIIMS hospital
approval (India's premier medical institutes); continuation of Bihar's
special category status request; chief ministerial support for Nitish
Kumar's legacy governance agenda; the 2025 Bihar state elections (which
NDA won comprehensively, with 202/243 assembly seats) have reinforced
Nitish Kumar's continued alignment.
- The
Coalition's Coordination Committee — a mechanism used in UPA governments
to manage coalition partner expectations and prevent policy defections —
functions informally in the NDA given that BJP's current coalition
partners were pre-election allies rather than post-election arrangements.
How It Works in Practice
1. Pre-election alliance formation: India's
coalitions are typically built before elections through formal alliance
announcements, seat-sharing negotiations, and common manifesto commitments.
This pre-election commitment provides more stability than post-election
cobbling because partners have made public commitments and face electoral
consequences for defection. The TDP and JD(U) rejoined NDA before the 2024
election after periods outside it, bringing their full constituency machinery
and voter bases into the BJP-led alliance.
2. Ministry portfolio negotiations: Coalition
partners receive ministerial portfolios proportional to their seat
contributions. In the 2024 government, TDP received two ministries and JD(U)
received two — a recognition of their pivotal arithmetic even while BJP took
all major portfolios (Home, Finance, Defence, External Affairs) for itself.
Portfolio allocation is the primary immediate currency of coalition formation.
3. State-specific policy concessions: Each regional
party partner enters the coalition with a list of state-specific policy demands
— typically infrastructure investment, special grants, or policy changes
affecting their home state. These concessions are built into subsequent Union
Budgets and scheme allocations; the 2025–26 Budget included enhanced
allocations for Andhra Pradesh (TDP demand) and Bihar (JD(U) demand) that were
larger than what purely formulaic distribution would have produced.
4. Ideological management: The BJP and its regional
partners have varying ideological compatibility. TDP is a centrist regional
party without BJP's Hindutva ideological commitment; JD(U) has historically
positioned itself as secular and caste-inclusive. These partners constrain the
most radical elements of BJP's policy agenda — the Uniform Civil Code, for
example, faces obstacles from JD(U)'s Muslim constituency interests; farm
law-type unilateral central legislation on state-adjacent subjects is harder in
a coalition context.
5. Opposition asymmetry: The INDIA alliance is a
post-election parliamentary opposition, not a governing coalition; it lacks the
organisational infrastructure, shared policy framework, and clear leadership
that would make it a credible governing alternative. The contrast with the NDA
— which has a clear Prime Minister, established ministerial relationships, and
coordinated state-level governance — gives the government a structural
advantage in political communication even in its coalition form.
What People Often Misunderstand
- A
surplus majority coalition does not work like a minority coalition:
Conventional coalition analysis focuses on pivotal partners who can bring
down the government; in a surplus majority coalition with multiple
redundant partners, no single defection is fatal; this structural feature
gives the BJP-led government substantially more room than the 1989–2004
minority coalition era.
- Coalition
instability is historically associated with specific configurations, not
coalition government per se: The 1989–2004 period had unstable
minority coalitions; the Vajpayee NDA (1999–2004) and both UPA terms
(2004–2014) completed full five-year terms; India's coalition experience
includes both stable and unstable configurations.
- Coalition
partners extract policy concessions but don't determine policy: The
BJP sets the broad policy agenda; coalition partners shape specific
state-level allocations and occasionally block specific legislation; they
do not fundamentally redirect national policy in ways that the BJP
leadership opposes.
- State
elections affect coalition stability: A coalition partner that suffers
a major state election loss (losing its home state) loses both its
regional electoral base and its future coalition leverage; JD(U)'s 2025
Bihar victory and TDP's 2024 Andhra Pradesh victory have strengthened both
partners' positions within the coalition.
- The
BJP's pre-2014 coalition experience was extensive: BJP led the NDA
government under Vajpayee from 1999 to 2004 in a complex 13-party
coalition that completed its full term; the 2024 coalition is not BJP's
first experience of coalition management, only Modi's.
What Changes Over Time
The 131st Constitutional Amendment Bill's defeat in April
2026 — needing two-thirds majority but receiving only 298/528 votes —
illustrated a specific limit on coalition arithmetic: even with NDA's full
support, the two-thirds constitutional amendment threshold is hard to reach;
three BJP-allied parties in the south (including AIADMK) did not support the
bill due to southern state representation concerns. This cross-cutting division
within the NDA itself illustrates that coalition politics creates internal constraints,
not only opposition constraints.
Sources and Further Reading
- CASI — Eswaran Sridharan on the 2024 Elections and India's Unique Coalition Politics: https://casi.sas.upenn.edu/iit/rohan-venkat-eswaran-sridharan-interview-2024
- Al
Jazeera — How India's past coalition governments fared: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/7/election-results-how-have-indias-past-coalition-governments-fared
- Wilson Center — Modi 3.0: India's New Governing Coalition: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/modi-30-indias-new-governing-coalition-and-implications-foreign-policy-and-national
- Britannica — National Democratic Alliance: https://www.britannica.com/topic/National-Democratic-Alliance-political-organization-India