HYDERABAD: On Tuesday, Union minister Rajnath Singh announced in Nizamabad that Nizam sugar factory would be revived. But will the promise be officiated into the BJP manifesto? More importantly, who will hold him accountable if the factory is not revived even if the BJP retains power for the second term? These questions are likely to continue to prevail as several political parties are not ready to submit a state-specific election manifesto.
Be it the Congress, BJP, AIMIM or even the TRS, the several national and regional parties will refrain from releasing a manifesto. This is unlike the Assembly elections where several political parties have released manifestos to the state election body.
The reasons often cited for not giving a state-specific manifesto by national parties is the broad coverage of national manifesto. AICC spokesperson Sravan Dasoju held that the Telangana Congress would not submit any state-specific manifesto. “The policy document we gave during Assembly elections will be implemented in spirit if the Congress comes to power. Else, we will ensure that we will get it implemented.”
The State saffron party unit, on a different note, held that its party is implementing all requests and proposals given by the State government.“The Centre has been practising the true spirit of federalism,” said NVS Prabhakar, chairperson of 2018 Assembly elections manifesto for BJP. BJP will not have a State-specific manifesto, he added. Likewise, it is the same with AIMIM and even TRS. It may be mentioned here that MIM has not given an election manifesto for 2018 elections.
Officials from the state election unit observed that manifestos are usually submitted by those parties that want to assume power after the completion of elections.
It may be mentioned that main reason for submitting a manifesto to the ECI is to analyse how a government would finance for schemes mentioned. Civil society organisations hold that state-specific manifestos are not given due to leadership tussle.
“It is a big issue that State-specific manifestos are not given which in most cases are vague. If the BJP or Congress State unit gives a manifesto, there would be leadership problems. For the Central party leadership, its priorities are different that causes tussle,” said VV Rao, state convenor of Election Watch.