New Delhi: A day after the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party released its manifesto for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, some conspicuous misses have raised questions.
NRC dropped
The BJP, as pointed out by The Hindu, has dropped mention of a National Register of Citizens from its manifesto. Not only was the NRC a prominent promise in the earlier – 2019 – manifesto, senior leaders of the ruling party, including Union home minister Amit Shah, frequently referred to it as a promise ever since the Citizenship Amendment Act was passed.
Protests against the CAA and the NRC had rocked the country in late 2019 and early 2020.
The 2024 manifesto mentions “implementation of the CAA.” The CAA was implemented in 2024, four and a half years after the law was enacted.
In 2019, the manifesto had cited “illegal immigration” as a cause behind an “adverse impact on local people’s livelihood and employment.”
However, activists point that a big step towards the NRC was taken when the Aadhaar database was linked with the NPR database, as early as 2015. Based on Shah’s insistence in 2019 that the CAA would be followed by the NRC and a National Population Register, it is unclear as to how this “chronology” would unfold now.
The BJP has been downplaying the NRC recently. A couple of months ago, Shah told the news agency ANI, “There is no NRC now, talk only about the CAA.”
No mention of Gorkhas
As opposed to its 2019 manifesto which had a section on a “political resolution on the matter of Gorkha,” this manifesto has no specific mention on the Gorkhas’ demand, The Telegraph has pointed out.
Gorkhas, who live in the northernmost parts of Bengal, have been demanding separation on the grounds that they are culturally and ethnically different from the rest of the state.
The report notes that in 2009, the BJP had stated in its manifesto that the party “will sympathetically examine and appropriately consider the long pending demands of the Gorkhas, the Adivasis and other people of Darjeeling district and Dooars region.”
The BJP lost that election and the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government returned to power.
It, however, did not mention the issue in the manifesto for 2014 – the year it came to power. But shortly afterwards, after outrage from its ally, the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, BJP said that it will “sympathetically examine and appropriate consider the long-pending demands of the Gorkhas, the Adivasis and other people of the Darjeeling district and Dooars…”.
This promise was not fulfilled in these years.
