The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) released its poll manifesto in New Delhi on Monday that contains among its various promises, construction of the Ram Mandir \u201cin a harmonious environment within the constitutional framework\u201d, doubling farmers’ income, reiterating stand on scrapping Article 370 and 35A.<\/p>\n
Later, the Congress, reacting to the BJP\u2019s manifesto \u2013 called the sankalp patra<\/em> \u2013 shredded it and said it was a \u201ccopy paste\u201d of BJP\u2019s own manifesto of 2014. The Congress said the party should have instead released a \u201cmaafinama<\/em>\u201d (letter of apology). \u201cOur party manifesto cover has pictures of a crowd of people, their manifesto has the picture of one man on the cover,\u201d Congress leader Ahmed Patel said. He said all their promises had been copy pasted with the previous deadlines changed.<\/p>\n The BJP\u2019s manifesto release was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other top BJP leaders like home minister Rajnath Singh, party president Amit Shah, minister of finance Arun Jaitley and minister for external affairs Sushma Swaraj among others. Party president Amit Shah stated that it would \u201cfulfil all expectations of the people\u201d.<\/p>\n The BJP has promised interest-free kisaan credit card loans to farmers where agricultural loans up to Rs 1 lakh to be given at zero per cent interest for between one to five years upon the repayment of the principal amount. Farmers\u2019 income will be doubled by 2022, they said. Small and marginal farmers above the age of 60 years would be eligible for a pension scheme.<\/p>\n Article 370 which confers special status on Jammu and Kashmir will be abrogated. Article 35 A which states no outsider can own property in Jammu and Kashmir, would also be annulled.<\/p>\n The manifesto promised to revise tax brackets for the middle class if voted to power. They said Rs 100 lakh crore would be devoted to infrastructure development by the year 2024.<\/p>\n The party has also mentioned that committed to \u201cprotect the linguistic, cultural and social identity of the people of North \u2013East\u201d, the Citizenship Amendment Bill will be revived.<\/p>\n The manifesto promises \u201cpucca houses\u201d for all by 2022. The percentage of people living below the poverty line will decrease to a single digit figure if the BJP government is voted back to power, as per its manifesto promise.<\/p>\n The BJP has also promised opening of 1.5 health and welfare centres and 75 medical colleges.<\/p>\n Described by the Prime Minister as a document inspired by nationalism with the aim of \u201cempowering the poor\u201d, the launch of the party manifesto comes just three days ahead of the first phase of polling in the country on April 11. Calling \u201cgood governance\u201d the \u201cmantra\u201d of his party, PM Modi said that home minister Rajnath Singh had worked on developing the manifesto for three months with useful inputs from all sections of society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BJP reiterates stand on Ram Mandir in manifesto.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":5111,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"tmauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5110","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5110"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tmauthors?post=5110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}