PM Narendra Modi to address crucial NDA meeting ahead of V-P polls and amid Parliament logjam today

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) parliamentary party meeting today. This get-together of the ruling alliance’s MPs is being held after a considerable gap, news agency PTI said. 

The NDA meeting, which Narendra Modi will chair, will take place a couple of days before nominations for the vice president’s election begin on 7 August. The NDA must announce its candidate, whose election will be a certainty due to the alliance’s majority in the electoral college, by 21 August, the last date of nomination filing and the Monsoon Session of Parliament.

The meeting also comes in the middle of a session which has been all but a washout so far, except for a two-day discussion on the Pahalgam attack and Operation Sindoor, due to a united Opposition’s ceaseless protest against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar by the Election Commission.

PM to speak on a host of issues

PM Modi is expected to speak on a host of current issues as the Opposition has been raising the heat over the poll body’s alleged partisan conduct favouring the government, and the Pahalgam terror attack and Operation Sindoor.

The prime minister is also likely to be felicitated by the parliamentary party over his government’s military response to the terror strike.

The electoral college for the vice president poll includes MPs of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, and its current strength is 782. If the Opposition also names a candidate, a distinct possibility, then the poll is scheduled to be held on 9 September.

Sources said Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju and a few BJP national general secretaries are likely to be coordinating with allies for the vice presidential poll.

Since the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, when the BJP lost its majority but comfortably crossed the halfway mark with allies, the sessional meeting of the party’s MPs was expanded to include its allies. PM Modi had addressed the first such meeting on July 2.

However, no meeting has been held in the last few sessions.

Before the last national elections, he addressed the weekly meetings of the BJP parliamentary party, which has now expanded to include party allies such as the TDP, JD(U), and LJP (Ram Vilas).

The meeting is attended by MPs of the ruling alliance, and PM Modi often discusses a wide range of political and governance issues and, at times, touches on the government’s agenda in Parliament.

He often offers the MPs talking points to be raised in public, especially in their constituencies.