IPL team, 27% OBC quota: Congress poll promises for Madhya Pradesh

The Congress manifesto for the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections, released on Tuesday, is abundant with welfare measures for farmers, women, and youngsters. It has also attempted to embrace Hindu cultural traditions, such as renewing the party’s commitment to cow protection, promising a “Rs 100 crore package” for constructing a Narmada pilgrimage corridor and rebuilding old temples.

Madhya Pradesh has 230 Assembly seats, and its 56.13 million electorate will vote on November 17 to elect a fresh House.

Congress state unit president, its chief ministerial face, Kamal Nath, released the 116-page manifesto in Bhopal, where he said his government would work to ensure the state gets its own Indian Premier League (IPL) team. Senior leaders, including former CM Digvijaya Singh, attended the event, whose highlight was the amiable exchange between him and Nath about the resentment brewing in the party over ticket distribution. Later, in a series of posts on X, Singh defended the ticket distribution process as impartial and promised organisational posts to aspirants whom the party had denied tickets.

According to the manifesto, a Congress government would reconstitute the state’s NITI Aayog and Statistical Commission to prepare a five-year plan for the state. The party, if it comes to power, would suggest to the Centre that the state should have a Legislative Council. It will set up a ‘manifesto implementation’ sub-committee of the council of ministers to be headed by a vice chairperson under the chief minister’s office and district-level committees.

Other highlights of the Congress’s “guarantees” are conducting a socio-economic caste Census, increasing other backward class (OBC) reservation from 14 per cent to 27 per cent in the state, a Rs 25 lakh health insurance and Rs 10 lakh accident insurance for each family, Rs 1,500 monthly allowance for women, cooking gas cylinders at Rs 500 each, free electricity up to 100 units and 50 per cent waiver in tariff up to 200 units, doubling social welfare pension from Rs 600, free school education and Rs 1,500 to Rs 3,000 allowance for two years to the landless unemployed educated youth.

The party has promised an urban employment guarantee scheme for unskilled workers, which its government has implemented in Rajasthan, and a minimum income guarantee to youth if the government fails to provide them with work. The manifesto has committed to link farm-related works, such as fencing of agriculture fields, with the existing rural employment guarantee scheme (MNREGA).

A new feature is the focus on landless agriculture workers, or as the manifesto has termed them, “fasal rakshak”, or protector of crops, with the promise of the government providing them bicycles, agricultural tools, and their minimum wages out of any compensation to the landholder for crop damage. Besides, the Congress has pledged to continue its earlier scheme of waiving farm loans of up to Rs 2 lakh. It has committed to purchase a quintal of wheat for no less than Rs 2,500 and Rs 2,600 for paddy, free power supply to farms, and even a rural fire brigade service to deal with farm fires.

On the jobs front, the party promised to fill 200,000 government vacancies, gradually inducting contractual workers and banning any long-term outsourcing of services by government departments. It promised loans on easy interest for the self-employed, vehicular loans on low interest and social security net to gig workers and Rs 25 lakh at 3 per cent interest for women-led start-ups. On education, to check the dropout rates, students from low-income families enrolled in classes first to eighth will get a Rs 500 a month scholarship, those in ninth and tenth Rs 1,000 and the ones in higher secondary Rs 1,500 a month.

The Congress manifesto has sought to reclaim the party’s icons and past slogans, promising to set up a Lal Bahadur Shastri commission for agriculture development. It also reminded that the party’s earlier election symbols were “a pair of bulls” and “cow and calf” to highlight its commitment to cow protection. The manifesto pledged to buy cow dung at Rs 2 per kg and that its government would give a Rs 5 per litre bonus on milk from cooperatives. The Congress promised to provide Rs 10,000 for the last rites of old parents, monthly allowance for priests, to develop the birthplace of Parashuram as a place of pilgrimage and develop a Ram Van Gaman Path. It would also hold cultural programmes in each district from November 14 to 19 every year, the birth anniversaries of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, respectively.

The manifesto juxtaposed the performance of the BJP’s 18-year government in the state versus the 15 months that the Nath-led Congress was in power between 2018 and 2020. In a message to the party’s rank and file, the manifesto termed those responsible for the party’s government falling, an allusion to Jyotiraditya Scindia, as “traitors”.

The manifesto said the first Cabinet meeting of the new government would set up a three-member panel to probe the decisions of the BJP’s nearly two-decade-long government in the state. The manifesto promised no new liquor shops in rural areas and that poppy straw should be out of the ambit of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act and included in excise.