BJP President Amit Shah and senior leader Arun Jaitley release the party manifesto for Jharkhand polls (Photo: PTI)
BJP President Amit Shah and senior party leader and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley released the party's manifesto today for the forthcoming Jharkhand assembly elections.
Jharkhand goes to polls on November 25 in a five-phase election.
The state is politically crucial for the BJP for many reasons. In the recent Lok Sabha elections, the party won 12 out of 14 Lok Sabha seats, recording its best performance ever.
Mr Shah today made it clear that he wants the BJP to repeat its success in the assembly elections and attain a clear majority. The BJP has earlier been in power in Jharkhand but had to depend on alliances with regional parties, including Shibu Soren's Jharkhand Mukti Morcha.
Both Mr Shah and Mr Jaitely brought up Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the 'Modi wave', to woo voters in the state.
"The Modi government has shown at the Centre what a government with full majority can do. I hope this work encourages the people of Jharkhand to vote for us," said Mr Shah.
"If the voters choose a government that needs deals to survive, there will be deals. When any industrialist wants to get into the Rajya Sabha, they take the flight to Jharkhand. This is a sad state of affairs," said Mr Jaitley.
But while the BJP is hoping for an absolute majority in the state assembly, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha says the party will not allow that to happen.
JMM, which has allied with both the Congress and the BJP in the past, had released its manifesto on Monday. "We are not even calling it a manifesto, we are calling it a pledge. A pledge for development," JMM leader and Chief Minister Hemant Soren said during the event.