Lok Sabha polls 2019: BJP wants National Register of Citizens

New Delhi: Balancing populist welfare initiatives with muscular nationalism, the ruling BJP on Monday released its manifesto for the high-stakes Lok Sabha polls promising pension to 15 crore marginal farmers and small shopkeepers to counter the Congress’ minimum income scheme, while vowing to extend Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) to the entire nation to push out infiltrators and show zero tolerance to terror.

While sharing its vision to make India a $5 trillion economy by 2025, the saffron party also reiterated some of its unfulfilled promises — construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya and scrapping of Article 370, 35A dealing with Jammu and Kashmir’s special status. Zero tolerance for terrorism and strengthening of defence forces also found special mention.

With the manifesto tagline “Sankalpit Bharat, Sashakt Bharat”, the BJP promised to deliver on 75 promises by the 75th year of Independence in 2022 and pave the way for making India a developed nation by 2047 — the 100th anniversary of Independence.

Uniform Civil Code, Sabarimala, refined version of the “garibi hatao” initiative and good governance formed the core of 50-page documents which made 93 promises on 12 subjects.

Releasing the manifesto, called “Sankalp Patra” (Document of Resolve), at the party headquarters, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “Nationalism is our inspiration, empowering the poor is our philosophy and good governance is our mantra.”

“Our ‘Sankalp’ (resolve) is to change India from a developing country to a developed country. We want people to hold us accountable. Hence, we have set out 75 goals to be achieved by 2022,” he said.

The manifesto was released in the presence of party president Amit Shah and Union ministers Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and Thawarchand Gehlot. The emotive issue of Ram Mandir also featured in the poll document along with a vow to eliminate triple talaq and nikah halala.

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