Modi talks against freebies, BJP uses same to woo voters in Madhya Pradesh

BJP in Madhya Pradesh is offering multiple freebies that could drain the State’s exchequer, all in view of the upcoming polls to the State Assembly later this year

Hyderabad: In sharp contrast to the repeated criticism from Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the practice of political parties offering freebies, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Madhya Pradesh is offering multiple freebies that could drain the State’s exchequer, all in view of the upcoming polls to the State Assembly later this year.

Though Modi has kept ‘warning’ people against what he calls the ‘revdi’ culture, terming it ‘very dangerous’ for the development of the country in non-BJP States, it could be quite ironic that his own party leaders are announcing freebies during polls.

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However, when the BJP announces such schemes with an eye on the polls, they are called empowerment initiatives, as is the case in Madhya Pradesh.

The State, where Assembly polls will be held in the next few months, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on June 10 transferred Rs.1,000 each into the bank accounts of over 1.25 crore women under the ‘Ladli Behna Yojana’, a scheme to financially support women of the State, at an event in Jabalpur and promised to increase the amount to Rs.3,000 in future. The scheme will put an additional burden of a whopping Rs.12,500 crore per annum on the exchequer.

Since 2.61 crore voters out of the total 5.41 crore voters are women, Chouhan has been focusing on them as they could play a crucial role in deciding the fate of all political parties.

This is not the first time that BJP is announcing freebies before an election. Last year, during the Assembly polls in Himachal Pradesh, the BJP promised three free LPG cylinders for poor women, bicycles and scooters for girl students, and financial aid of Rs. 25,000 to all pregnant women.

In Gujarat, where the BJP retained power, it offered two free LPG cylinders annually to households apart from subsidized edible oil. Even during the Karnataka polls in May, the BJP made a host of promises, including provision of three free cooking gas cylinders to all BPL families annually.

The BJP in its manifesto for Goa too promised to provide three free LPG cylinders to every household, 33 percent reservation for women in all future recruitments in the public sector and women-only police stations in every taluk. In Uttarakhand, it promised to give Rs.500 per month to women heads of every poor family and a corpus fund of Rs.500 crore for Women Self Help Groups.