AJSU Party has gone into overdrive to play up the demands of special status for Jharkhand ahead of the General and Assembly elections in the State leaving behind the main Opposition BJP and Babulal Marandi-led Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (JVM).
The party on Thursday sprang a surprise by setting up a large number of huge hoardings in main thoroughfares of the capital demanding special status apparently making it a main poll plank. "You will see similar hoardings across Jharkhand as it is the State's agenda," maintained AJSU party chief and former Deputy Chief Minister Sudesh Mahto.
Significantly, the demand for special category State status for Jharkhand was raised by former Chief Minister Arjun Munda for the first time at a meeting of the National Development Council (NDC) in 2011 and again in 2012. But the BJP appeared to have not taken it seriously and made it a party agenda. "The BJP has not chalked out any concrete plan to put pressure on the Centre, apparently considering it a pet issue of Arjun Munda only, to accede to the demand," said a senior party leader requesting anonymity.
The JVM, which has also joined the special status bandwagon, has not moved beyond sound bites. Incidentally, the Congress, which shares power in the State, has opposed the move of these parties. Union Planning Minister Rajiv Shukla also recently made a statement in Parliament that the issue to grant special status to Jharkhand, along with other States, is not under the consideration of the Central Government.
In fact, the Centre had communicated in January, 2013, to the Government of Jharkhand that based on an integrated consideration of existing criteria, Jharkhand does not qualify for grant of special category status.Taking a dig at the Congress, Sudesh said that those who consider that Jharkhand was self sufficient not to demand special status should know that the State fulfills all the criteria defined under Gadgil formula adopted by National Development Council in 1969 to get special status. "As many as 11 states have been granted special status since 1969 under Gadgil formula," he added.
"The demand of special status is the basic issue for development. We cannot face the challenges, which are being faced by the State if the Centre ignores our demand for special status," Sudesh, who has played up the deprivation sentiments and borrowed the slogans of Mamata Banerjee-Mass and Maati-to design his political strategy, told The Pioneer. Sudesh said that a party delegation will meet the President, Prime Minister, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman and Raghuram Rajan, who heads the special committee on defining fresh criteria for backwardness, in the first week of September.
The AJSU chief said that Jharkhand did not happen to be a "natural state". "It has been created after a long struggle. Even before Independence it was victim of the colonisation and extreme economic exploitation leading to ulgulan (great tumult) often since Tilka Manjji uprising in 1789," he pointed out. However, the AJSU's publicity spree on its new political agenda, ahead of the polls, has raised the heckles of one time friend BJP. "These propaganda and wall writings will not come between the electorates and our party," said BJP state president Ravindra Rai.
Rai said that the party was going to the people with the special status demand. "It was the BJP which has given us the new State. Again, it is the BJP, which will give the newly born state a special status if it came into power at the Centre," he asserted.