With the promise of ushering in a ‘
Ram Rajya,’ the Bharatiya Janata Party unveiled here on Friday its manifesto for the 2009 Lok Sabha election.
The party promised to give each ‘
below the poverty level’ family a quota of
35 kg rice or wheat at Rs. 2 a kg, bettering the Congress offer at Rs. 3 a kg. It promised to set up community kitchens in extremely impoverished areas and expand the mid-day meal scheme for school-going children as part of a package of measures to make India hunger-free.
The party’s prime ministerial candidate, L.K. Advani, said, “Ram Rajya is possible” and drew attention to the fact that the party was releasing its manifesto on the occasion of Ram Navmi. And, of course, the Ram temple issue was part of the manifesto, with the BJP promising “to explore all possibilities, including negotiations and judicial proceedings, to facilitate the construction of the temple at Ayodhya.”
Other references to Lord Ram were in the promise to look for an alternative alignment for the proposed Sethusamudram Channel Project while declaring Ram Sethu a “national heritage.”
The party promised to carve separate Telangana out of Andhra Pradesh, and said it favoured the creation of smaller States. BJP president Rajnath Singh said the party was sympathetic to the demand for a Gorkhaland.
Manifesto committee chairman Murli Manohar Joshi said he received about 900 suggestions. It was after 11 years that the BJP released its own manifesto to signal its ideological concerns — cow protection, implementing a uniform civil code and abrogating Article 370 of the Constitution (special status for J&K) without which “full integration” of the nation was “not possible.”
The party announced a slew of measures to help farmers: a complete loan waiver for all farmers, which would presumably include the kulaks, which some of their allies are in Punjab and Haryana; availability of loans to farmers at 4 per cent interest; a guaranteed farm income and crop insurance; irrigation of 35 million hectares of additional farm land; and revision of minimum wages to help the landless agriculture labour.
Security issues have been given a major thrust: all armed forces and paramilitary force personnel to be exempt from I-T; one rank, one pension to be implemented; a separate pay commission for them; and better rehabilitation measures.
Generous and low interest loans for students, tough measures against ragging, schemes for the girl child, exemption from personal income tax for those earning up to Rs. 3 lakh per annum, and for women and senior citizens up to Rs. 3.5 lakh, are among the other promises.
