Welfare, big-ticket transport projects, and religion starred in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s manifesto for the April 23 Tamil Nadu assembly elections released on Monday by Union health minister and the party’s former national president JP Nadda. Track election updates here
The manifesto promises monthly assistance of ₹2,000 to all women heads of households and a one-time sum of ₹10,000 to every household. The BJP’s ally in the state, the AIADMK, the senior partner of the National Democratic Alliance in Tamil Nadu, made a similar promise in its manifesto released on March 24. BJP state president Nainar Nagendra and former state president K Annamalai was also present during the release of the manifesto.
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Nadda also announced that the party will declare Thaipoosam as the state festival to honour Lord Murugan and will ensure that the tradition of lighting the Karthigai Deepam at the Thiruparankundram Hilltop is resumed and protected through the years. The party has sought to be at the forefront of a movement, legal and social, on the lighting of this lamp, with the allegation being that it was moved many years ago to a different location within the temple complex to avoid offending the sensibilities of worshippers at a near-by Muslim shrine.
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In its manifesto, the BJP has also promised to overhaul Tamil Nadu’s rail network by enabling land acquisition at fair prices and expanding connectivity via projects like High Speed Rail Corridors (Chennai-Bengaluru, Chennai-Hyderabad), Coimbatore-Tiruppur Salem RRTS, Villupuram-Chennai Semi-Urban Rail, Hydro Power Train project and new Sleeper Vande Bharat trains linking Chennai with Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata.
The party also promised special fast track courts and victim-witness protection in crimes against women and optimised Nirbhaya Fund Utilisation. The BJP said it will empower women-led cooperatives, SHGs, and MSMEs with interest-free loans up to ₹50 lakh for manufacturing units and a mandated 20% government procurement quota.
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At the launch, Nadda accused the ruling DMK of converted Tamil Nadu into a “crime capital” and said it was a “Dynastic, Money and Kickbacks’ party”.
“Tamil Nadu is the cradle of one of the world’s oldest civilisations, and we are proud of it. But if I talk about DMK and its allies, we find that the cultural capital has now converted into a crime capital. The pulse of people is that there is a lot of resentment against the DMK, dynastic politics, crime and corruption. In this election, we will see that the people will expose this unholy alliance,” he added.
The BJP is contesting 27 seats in the 234-member assembly.