Core agendas met, BJP mulls fresh ideological vows at meet

Tribune News Service

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, April 1

This will be the first time in nearly three decades that BJP’s core promises of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya and abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir will not be part of its parliamentary election manifesto. Both stand realised.

Party’s Poll planks till now

• Ram Mandir: Remained a core poll promise of BJP since 1989
• Article 370: After the BJP was founded in 1980, it mentioned the disagreement with Article 370 in J&K in the 1984 manifesto; reiterating it in 1989
• UCC: The party’s call for UCC intensified after the 1985 Shah Bano judgment and later became part of its core promises

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the Ram Mandir consecration in Ayodhya on January 22 this year, his government abrogated Article 370 on August 5, 2019, months after returning to power for the second time.

The third core agenda of the BJP, which has remained integral to its political ideology - the implementation of the Uniform Civil Code - might still stay on the party’s Lok Sabha poll manifesto to be released for the 18th general election, considering the related law has so far been passed only by BJP-ruled Uttarakhand, while a national-level consultation on the issue is ongoing in the Law Commission of India.

On UCC, the BJP has adopted a safer route of letting states enact the legislation. With core promises fulfilled, the manifesto panel of the BJP, which met for the first time on Monday under the chairmanship of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, would have its task cut out to thrash out fresh ideological positions for the future.

It remains to be seen what those new articulations would be for a party centred on the campaign plank of “virasat bhi, vikaas bhi’ (heritage and development both).

The PM made a strong point about BJP’s continued weightage to Hindutva when on Sunday he launched the party’s election canvassing in Uttar Pradesh from Meerut, where Arun Govil, who played Lord Ram in Ramanand Sagar’s “Ramayana”, is the saffron nominee.

While the BJP mulls new core agendas, party leaders today said “Viksit Bharat” was the dominant theme of the first meeting of the manifesto committee.

“The first meeting of the manifesto committee discussed the road map for Viksit Bharat by 2047,” Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, co-convenor of the panel said after the discussions today.

Goyal said the party’s missed call service for the manifesto inputs had received over 3.75 lakh responses, while PM’s NaMO app had received 1.70 lakh.

The PM has repeatedly said his third term would be one of transformative reform. He has also said gradually he would build a system of administration where the government gets out of a common man’s day-to-day life and is present only for the poorest who need it.

BJP chief JP Nadda had earlier flagged off 916 video vans across 3,500 assembly constituencies to seek people’s views on the BJP manifesto. The 27-member manifesto committee of the BJP has finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman as co-convenor.

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