The quitters from the list of Friends of BJP are currently on a rise with many not accepting the new friend requests and many removing them from their list. Many political parties who were never the Friends of the BJP have even gone on to block them, enemies, before friends.
But what makes these political parties distance from the BJP, the single largest political party in the world and the current biggest party in India?
The lost friends of BJP have many times talked about the Big Brotherly attitude of the BJP, or as many would call it, the Big Brother Syndrome. But, BJP blames otherwise.
BJP talks about the aspiration of small/regional political parties to gain a national advantage through the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), but the failure to do so and the crushed aspiration of a higher dream have influenced them to part ways with BJP.
There are 5 political parties that have left the BJP alliance of NDA and chose not to be Friends of BJP.
1. Telugu Desam Party (TDP)
Telugu Desam Party (TDP) parted its ways with the BJP in 2018, on the grounds of the denial of a special package to Andhra Pradesh, post bifurcation, and the creation of Telangana, which was promised by the Congress-led UPA-2 government.
Chandrababu Naidu, the leader of TDP, accused the Centre of breaking a promise to Andhra Pradesh.
BJP-led NDA government, though announced a package of ₹1200 crores, never met the demand of TDP of ₹2000 crores, and the demand was turned down by then Finance Minister of India, Arun Jaitley.
On this ground, though not politically motivated, made TDP part its way from BJP and fight the coming legislative assembly election alone.
2. Shiv Sena
Shiv Sena was probably the first in NDA to show its emotions of probable suffocation of NDA in Maharashtra against their oldest ally BJP. After the massive victory of NDA in 2014, came the Maharashtra assembly election, but the aspiration of Shiv Sena to have more seats than BJP made the oldest allies fight the 2014 election alone, and not in NDA. As a result, BJP won 122 seats and Shiv Sena 68 in the Maharashtra assembly of 288 strength. BJP and Shiv Sena came together post-election and formed the government.
The second split came in the 2019 Maharashtra assembly elections, where BJP and Shiv Sena fought in the coalition of NDA, won 161 seats, and easily crossed the majority mark of 144.
BJP won 105 seats and Shiv Sena won 56 seats, but Shiv Sena demanded the post of Chief Minister and major ministries, which the BJP denied and Shiv Sena left NDA in search of other political parties to form a government.
Shiv Sena formed the Maharashtra government in 2019, with Uddhav Thackrey as CM, with the support of the Indian National Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party. which came to be known as Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA).
In 2022, the MVA government fell as the 50 MLAs of Shiv Sena out of 56, pulled back the support for CM, and went with their Natural Allies, BJP, leaving the Shiv Sena leader alone, and reinstating the BJP-Shiv Sena government.
3. All-Jharkhand Students’ Union (AJSU)
All-Jharkhand Students’ Union (AJSU) was a BJP ally in Jharkhand for more than 19 years, but finally parted ways in 2019 after it demanded more seats in the 2019 Jharkhand assembly elections, but BJP refused to give anything more than 13 seats in the state.
AJSU claimed their potential to win many seats referring to the 2014 assembly polls, where they won 5 seats out of the 8 seats contested. BJP refused to entertain the claim of a high winning percentage rate of AJSU and feared a loss if BJP contests on lesser seats.
AJSU was annoyed by the attitude of the BJP and felt that it was trying to influence AJSUs decisions and left the NDA to contest the elections.
4. Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)
Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) of Punjab was another old ally of the BJP in NDA but it left following the nationwide protest against BJP on three Farm Bills passed by the Centre. But the drift of BJP and SAD started way before.
BJP has always been the younger brother of SAD in Punjab and has marginally no reach in the state of Punjab, but as the BJP won a landslide majority in the Centre, it started demanding more seats, unsecured the SAD influence on being a Saffron Party.
BJP always alleged SAD of supporting Sand Mafias and Drug Mafias of Punjab and stated that SAD needs to do more to curb these activities in Punjab.
The biggest issue came in 2015 with the sacrilege incident of Guru Granth Sahib and Bargari police firing, when SAD was trying to save itself from the blames and BJP was quick itself to distance from all the incidents and did not save the ally SAD.
Farm Bills could be called the last nail in the coffin where SAD tried not to go against the agitation of farmers of Punjab.
5. Janta Dal United (JDU)
Nitish Kumar, the chief of JDU is known to roll from party to party to save him the seat of Chief Minister of Bihar. JDU has been a long ally of the BJP and Nitish Kumar has been in the seat of Chief Minister of Bihar for fairly from the year 2000.
Nitish Kumar drifted from BJP in 2013 for the first time following the announcement of Narendra Modi as NDAs Prime Ministerial candidate for the 2014 general elections, and fought the 2015 Bihar election in coalition with RJD and succeeded in forming the government.
The JDU-RJD coalition fell after Nitish Kumar accused the RJD of corruption.
JDU again entered the NDA and formed the Bihar government with BJP and again, Nitish Kumar as Chief Minister.
In 2022, Nitish Kumar accused BJP of trying to break JDU and drifted again from NDA and formed a government again with RJD, who he previously accused of corruption.
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