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With a slew of promises mentioned in the manifesto for Odisha, the Congress, looking to revive its base in the state, has moulded its poll message around the welfare narrative. On Friday, the party released its manifesto for the Odisha Assembly polls, choosing to replicate the templates it followed in Karnataka and Telangana, where it won the Assembly polls last year. The promises indicate how the party is planning to counter the BJD’s narrative on welfare initiatives by targeting the constituency of voters who form the bedrock of the ruling party’s electoral success.
Among other things, the Congress has promised jobs to five lakh youth and a monthly unemployment allowance of Rs 3,000. Under the Grihalaxmi Yojana, the party has assured Rs 2,000 each month to women heads of households, a gas cylinder for Rs 500 to each family, and bank-loan waivers for all women self-help groups (SHGs).
The party has also promised a farm loan waiver and a Rs 2,000 monthly pension to farmers and said it would purchase paddy at Rs 3,000 per quintal. The current MSP is Rs 2,183 per quintal.
In the health sector, the Congress has promised free treatment up to Rs 25 lakh for all, including government servants. The party has also announced Rs 200 units of free electricity to every domestic consumer, the doubling of the old-age pension to Rs 2,000 per month, and an immediate 27% reservation for OBCs in educational institutions and government jobs. It has also promised to refund, within six months of coming to power, those who have lost money to chit funds.
Congress Odisha in-charge Ajoy Kumar said the implementation cost of these schemes would be Rs 48,000 crore.
“Odisha has the capacity to implement the guarantees. (Chief Minister) Naveen Patnaik is not able to implement such schemes because of the loot by the BJD and the BJP,” Kumar said.
The Congress, which governed Odisha for more than four decades, has been seeing a decline in its number of seats and vote shares since 1995. The party won only nine Assembly seats in 2019, while its vote share was 16%. This was lower than five years earlier when the party bagged 16 constituencies and a 26% vote share. They won a seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and drew a blank in 2014.
The Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal (BJD) has been in power in Odisha for 24 years and has cultivated a base on the back of a range of welfare schemes. Seventy lakh rural women are part of the Patnaik government’s Mission Shakti programme, which was launched in 2001, and are considered the BJD’s biggest support base.
The Patnaik government also has the Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation (KALIA) programme, an income support scheme for the farmers that is in sync with the Centre’s PM-Kisan scheme.
The Biju Swasthya Kalyan Yojana (BSKY), meanwhile, covers over 96 lakh households and assures healthcare assistance up to Rs 5 lakh. Women are provided Rs 10 lakh under the scheme.
To protect those who lost money in chit-fund scams worth thousands of crores, the Naveen government set up a probe panel in July 2013. It has submitted multiple interim reports and identified over 1-lakh small depositors who have less than Rs 10,000 in various chit fund firms.
