Opposition leaders meet to discuss non-NDA alliance ahead of May 23 results

Senior leaders of several opposition parties met in New Delhi on Tuesday, ahead of the Lok Sabha results due on May 23, to discuss whether a non-NDA alliance could stake a claim to form the government.

Demand on VVPATs

The leaders also decided to approach the Election Commission (EC) to press their demand that the paper trail of votes, recorded by VVPAT machines, be matched against the figures from the electronic voting machines (EVMs).

Sitaram Yechury, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said the EC had yet to set out a procedure for what would happen in the event of a mismatch. He argued that even a single discrepancy between the sampled VVPATs and the EVM count should lead to all the VVPATs in that Assembly segment being counted, so as to protect the integrity of the electoral process.

Who attended

Those at the meeting included Ahmed Patel, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Ashok Gehlot and Abhishek Manu Singhvi of the Congress; TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu; Satish Chandra Misra of the BSP; the CPI’s D Raja; Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi Chief Minister and AAP convenor; the TMC’s Derek O’Brien; the SP’s Ramgopal Yadav; the DMK’s Kanimozhi; the RJD’s Manoj Jha; the NCP’s Majeed Memon; and Devinder Rana of the National Conference, among others.

What happened next

Votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha election were counted on 23 May 2019. The BJP won 303 of the 543 seats and the Congress 52, and Narendra Modi was sworn in for a second term as Prime Minister on 30 May 2019.

See also: political leaders

Originally published on 21 May 2019. Rewritten on 9 October 2026.

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