Brainstorming over tickets… who cares for manifesto!

With little about more than three weeks to go for the polls, political parties are busy deciding on tickets while their manifestos have taken backseat. Moreover, political parties till now haven’t shown much seriousness about the promises made in manifestos. This time, the poll panel too has said that political parties should try to avoid making promises that could not be fulfilled.

Election manifesto represents views and plans of a party that would be accomplished during its tenure, if chosen to power. Going by this logic, voters should have access to the election manifestos, the day elections are announced, so that they can study it properly and take their decision wisely.

Though Aam Admi Party is insignificant in Madhya Pradesh but has taken a lead in terms of declaring its manifesto. Much before declaring its manifesto, the AAP came up with ‘Shapath-Patra’ in the month of July. It had declaration made on 52 points on a stamp paper.

“We are committed to do what we promise. Delhi government is an ideal example. We are the first party ever to declare our intentions as shapath on a stamp paper. We released our shapath-patra in July,” said Alok Agarwal, state president of AAP. He said that now party’s manifesto would be published and distributed among public through door-to-door campaign. The BJP and the Congress- both have same reply on manifesto- would be release after Diwali.

“A meeting of manifesto committee will be held soon to give it a final shape. Most probably the manifesto would be released after Diwali,” said Deepak Vijayvargiya, member of manifesto committee and spokesperson of BJP. When asked how many copies of manifesto would be printed by the party, he replied that it was difficult to tell right away.

When asked how BJP would take its manifesto to its voters, Vijayvargiya said that in previous election party had released the manifesto in all districts simultaneously. The main objective behind this exercise was to take it to the grass root level. “Party also plans to publish a summary of manifesto to be distributed among the voters,” he added.

Congress also plans to release the manifesto after Diwali. “Our election manifesto is almost ready. A copy of the draft has been sent to Delhi for approval. We will be releasing it sometime after Diwali,” said Pankaj Chaturvedi, spokesperson of Congress.

When asked what will the party do take the party’s polls promises to ground level, Chaturvedi replied that they would take help of social media tools. “We will circulate it through Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and other social media platforms,” added Chaturvedi.

Congress and the BJP had same reply when reminded to make promises that could be fulfilled. Both of them said that their effort always remains that none of the promise remains unfulfilled. But there are times when there are some unexpected developments that create roadblock in completing the poll promise during that tenure, but parties keep in mind to fulfill it in the next term.