A 164-seat mandate is easier to win than to share
The TDP–Jana Sena–BJP alliance swept Andhra Pradesh in 2024. Two years on, the strain is over seat-sharing and political space rather than policy.
The NDA alliance in Andhra Pradesh — the Telugu Desam Party, Jana Sena and the BJP — won 164 of 175 assembly seats and 21 of 25 Lok Sabha seats in 2024. It is among the most lopsided mandates any state has delivered in recent Indian politics.
Two years in, the difficulty is not governing with a majority. It is that a majority that large gives every partner a reason to believe it deserves more.
The arithmetic of an unequal alliance
N. Chandrababu Naidu is Chief Minister; Pawan Kalyan, the Jana Sena chief, is Deputy Chief Minister. Jana Sena’s 2024 performance was remarkable by any standard — it won all 21 seats it contested, a clean sweep, after being reduced to a single seat in 2019. Pawan Kalyan took Pithapuram by a margin above 70,000.
A party with a 100 per cent strike rate has a strong claim to more seats next time. A party that supplies the Chief Minister and the overwhelming bulk of the legislature has a strong claim to concede none. Both claims are reasonable. They are not compatible.
The BJP, the third partner, brings central government alignment — which matters enormously to a state seeking funds for Polavaram, Amaravati and metro rail — but has the smallest state footprint of the three.
Where the friction shows
Alliance strain has surfaced most visibly around seat-sharing and political space, particularly in the run-up to local body elections. Local elections are where coalitions are hardest to hold: there are thousands of seats, no national narrative to subordinate local ambition, and every ward is a place where two allied parties have candidates who want the same job.
Rajya Sabha allocation has been managed within the alliance framework — three seats to TDP and one to Jana Sena, decided after NDA partner meetings with the consent of all three. That is the model working. The joint statement issued by BJP national president J.P. Nadda, Naidu and Pawan Kalyan committing the three parties to contest together is the formal expression of it.
Why it is likely to hold
Alliances break when a partner calculates it does better alone. None of the three currently does.
Jana Sena’s sweep was achieved on seats chosen in consultation with the TDP — a strike rate that depends on the alliance existing. The BJP has no independent path to power in Andhra Pradesh. The TDP faces a YSRCP that, despite being reduced to 11 seats, retains a substantial vote share and would benefit from any split in the anti-incumbent coalition.
Mutual dependence is not affection, but it is durable.
What to watch
Local body election seat-sharing is the real test, and it is a test the alliance takes repeatedly rather than once. Watch whether disputes are resolved through the NDA partner mechanism that handled the Rajya Sabha seats, or increasingly through public statements — the second is how coalitions announce that the first has stopped working.