NDA Meeting Updates: The National Democratic Alliance led by the BJP today held its first meeting of the MPs in Samvidhan Sadan of the Old Parliament. During the meeting, those sitting on the dais include Prime Minister-elect Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, JP Nadda and NDA allies -TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu, Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan, JDU chief Nitish Kumar, HAM chief Jitan Ram Manjhi, LJP-RV chief Chirag Paswan, Apna Dal chief Anupriya Patel, Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde, and NCP leader Ajit Pawar. 


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Since Jayant Chaudhary of the Rashtriya Lok Dal was sitting among the newly elected MPs and not at the dais, this drew sharp criticism from the Samajwadi Party. "The head of the RLD party Jayant Chaudhary was not even given a place on the stage even though he has 2 Lok Sabha seats, while the leaders of the parties having 1 seat each were made to sit together on the stage. This shows the BJP's hatred towards the Jat community and its dramatic false respect for late Chaudhary Charan Singh and Chaudhary Ajit Singh has been exposed. If Jayant Chaudhary ji is really farmer-friendly, then he should distance himself from NDA and raise his voice against BJP on farmers' interests. One should not trade his self-respect and the interests of farmers with BJP due to petty and immediate greed," said the Samajwadi Party. 



The Samajwadi Party was indirectly targeting leaders like Anupriya Patel, Jitan Ram Manjhi and Ajit Pawar who have won one seat each in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls. However, it appears that the sitting arrangements were made to give respect to the CMs, allies and senior leaders. Apart from Anupriya Patel and Chirag Paswan, other NDA leaders sitting on the dais are either CM, CM elect or former CMs. While Manjhi and Kumaraswamy are former Chief Ministers, Naidu is going to be the Andhra Pradesh CM and Pawan Kalyan is likely to be his deputy, Shinde is the CM of Maharashtra, Nitish Kumar of Bihar, and Ajit Pawar is the deputy CM. On the other hand, Anupriya Patel is a cabinet minister besides being head of the Apana Dal and Chirag Paswan having 5 Lok Sabha seats is the fifth highest seat winner in the NDA after BJP, TDP, JDU and Shiv Sena-Shinde. 



The NDA leaders today elected Narendra Modi as their leader once again paving the way for making him the Prime Minister for the third time in a row. Modi will take oath on June 9 at 6pm.