BJP TO RELEASE MANIFESTO FOR LS ELECTIONS TODAY

NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will release its manifesto — “Sankalp Patra” — for the Lok Sabha elections on Sunday, with its planks of welfare and development besides a roadmap for “viksit Bharat” expected to figure prominently in its election agenda.

The party, in a post on X, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi and its other senior leaders will attend the unveiling of the manifesto at the party headquarters at 8.30am on Sunday, that coincides with the birth anniversary of B R Ambedkar, a towering leader from the Dalit community and an architect of the Indian Constitution.

As the BJP government has fulfilled most of its core ideological promises, including the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and the repeal of Article 370, all eyes will be on how the ruling party’s larger cultural and Hindutva agenda figures in the manifesto. Party officials familiar with the matter said measures for the youth, women, farmers and the poor — four “castes” Modi has often spoken about — will be among the highlights of its poll pledges.

MADHA

partner to be well-settled before marriage itself and their parents too approve of this demand even though their own sons are unemployed. If every girl wants a government employee or IT engineer, who will marry us,” he wondered.

Several other bachelors HT spoke to echoed the farmer, saying girls were only interested in marrying government servants or employees of big companies in Pune and Mumbai who had a fixed income and an apartment of their own.

Recognising this preference, some families with unmarried men are selling off their agricultural land in the village to buy apartments on the outskirts of big cities. Many young men too are moving to big cities in the hope of finding brides more easily.

For instance, Rohan Chavan, 34, an unmarried man from Uplai Budruk village, moved to Pune this January hoping he could get married soon.

“The situation of rural youth in our region is pathetic. No one is ready to marry youth from the villages. So my parents asked me to relocate to Pune. My father also decided to sell some land and purchase a flat on the outskirts of Pune, so parents agree to give their daughter to me in marriage,” said Chavan.

Vilas Bet, former head of the Sociology department at Walchand College in Solapur, agreed that young men not finding brides was a major problem in rural areas of the state.

“Earlier it was observed that girls from these parts who migrated to cities like Pune and Mumbai after their studies were not ready to choose grooms from rural parts. Now, even girls and parents living in rural areas are choosing young men living in cities for marriage,” said the retired professor. He said the difference in standards of living in rural and urban areas was to blame for the situation.

Baraskar, the VBA candidate from Madha, said more than 25,000 young men from the constituency were struggling to find brides as young women and their parents were inclined towards government employees or those with fixed income.

“This is key reason why the number of unmarried young men from agrarian background are increasing,” he said.

Solapur collector Kumar Ashirwad said though the unequal sex ratio, which contributed to the marriage problem, was a big concern, the situation had improved in recent years courtesy interventions by the women and child development department of the zilla parishad.