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At a public rally in Chhattisgarh’s Durg last Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced that the Centre would extend its free foodgrain scheme by five years, that is, until December 31, 2028.
This indicates that his current election campaign is not restricted to ensuring popular support for his party in the ongoing Assembly polls but beyond for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Until last week, only Congress central leaders, such as party chief Mallikarjun Kharge and party leader Rahul Gandhi, had approached their campaigning for the Assembly polls to the five states with an eye on shaping their party's political discourse against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Lok Sabha polls.
Gandhi and Kharge focussed their respective campaigns on the promise that the Congress will order a caste census when it comes to power at the Centre in Delhi in 2024.
It has also promised that its sundry “guarantees” or welfare schemes in different states it rules would be extended countrywide if it were to form the government at the Centre.
Gandhi has consistently flagged the alleged collusion between the PM and the Adani Group, and that the PM makes “false promises,” such as the one to deposit “Rs 15 lakh” in the bank accounts, a plank that he would persist with in the months leading up to the Lok Sabha polls.
The BJP, meanwhile, has re-tailored its election pitch that until now ignored the Congress barbs on alleged corruption by its governments in the states and questioned its silence on conducting a countrywide caste census.
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Over the last week, the BJP’s top two leaders, Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, have responded to the question of caste census and brought up “the past corrupt deeds of the Congress.” The BJP and the larger Sangh Parivar have also announced their plans for the week-long inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya in January. It promised that its governments will organise free visits of devotees to the temple, which would coincide with the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls in April-May 2024.
On the issue of caste, the PM has responded by stating that the Congress abused him since he belonged to the other backward class (OBC) but has persisted with the line that poverty has no caste.
In Durg, on November 4, highlighting his government's pro-poor schemes, the PM said the Centre would extend the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) by five years, providing free food grain to an estimated 810 million beneficiaries.
At his rallies, the PM has also spoken of “Modi's guarantees” and ‘kamal’, the lotus election symbol of the BJP, as the party's only “face.” He has also urged those who attend his public meetings to return home with his message to their relatives and neighbours that “Modi was here.”
The BJP manifesto in Chhattisgarh was called “Modi's guarantees for Chhattisgarh.” Shah suggested in Bihar that his party was not averse to a caste census, but would take a decision at an appropriate time.
The PM has taken to reiterating his promise that India would be among the world's top three economies in his third term as the country’s prime minister.
In mid-October, speaking in Aizawl, the capital of poll-bound Mizoram, Gandhi said the Congress governments in the states were “testing ideas”, “scaling” those that work and implementing these in the rest of the country.
For instance, the Congress in Madhya Pradesh has promised the ‘Vardaan’ health insurance of Rs 2.5 million and Rs 1 million accidental insurance to each household. It has already been implemented as the Chiranjeevi health insurance by the Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government in Rajasthan.
