Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday launched the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Sankalp Patra, or manifesto, for the upcoming Jharkhand Assembly elections, promising to provide Rs 2,100 per month to every woman in the state if his party came to power, reported News 18.

The launch event in Ranchi was attended by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, Union ministers Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Sanjay Seth and BJP Jharkhand President Babulal Marandi.

Voting for the Jharkhand Assembly polls will be held in two phases on November 13 and November 20. The counting of votes will take place on November 23, alongside that of the Maharashtra elections.

Other key promises in the BJP’s manifesto include providing liquefied petroleum gas cylinders at Rs 500 each for every household, along with two free cylinders each year, reported News 18.

The party has also pledged to return land allegedly occupied by “infiltrators” to the state’s Adivasis. The manifesto adds that the children of “infiltrators” who marry Adivasis will not be recognised as Adivasis.

The Hindutva party has also promised to exempt Adivasis from the Uniform Civil Code.

The Uniform Civil Code is a proposed common set of laws governing marriage, divorce, succession and adoption for all citizens. Currently, such personal affairs of different religious and Indigenous groups – except in Uttarakhand and Goa – are based on community-specific laws, largely derived from religious scripture.

Shah also promised to curb the alleged infiltration in the state by Bangladeshi citizens, reported ANI.

“The people of Jharkhand have to decide whether they want a government full of corruption or a BJP government moving forward on the path of development under the leadership of PM Modi,” Shah was quoted by ANI as saying. “Do they want a government that endangers the identity, land and women of Jharkhand by allowing infiltration or do they want a Bharatiya Janata Party government that protects the borders?”

The Union home minister said that Adivasis in Jharkhand were not safe under Chief Minister Hemant Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha government.

“The number of tribals in Santhal Pargana is continuously decreasing,” Shah said. “Infiltrators are coming here and luring our daughters and marrying them and occupying the land. If this is not stopped, then neither the culture of Jharkhand, nor the employment, land, or daughters here will be safe. That is why the BJP is moving ahead with the slogan of securing ‘Roti, Beti, Maati’.”

The Santhal Parganas administrative division comprises six districts: Godda, Deoghar, Dumka, Jamtara, Sahibganj and Pakur.

In recent years, the Hindutva party has frequently sought to push claims of large-scale undocumented immigration from Bangladesh as the driving force behind demographic changes in the region.

In 2022, a BJP worker from Jharkhand filed a petition before the High Court claiming that the proportion of Scheduled Tribes in the division was declining due to “illegal infiltrators from Bangladesh” who were marrying into Adivasi families to acquire land and influence. A Scroll investigation has found such claims to be false.

The Union government in September acknowledged before the High Court that the share of Adivasis in the region’s population had decreased, but did not attribute this to “infiltration” from Bangladesh. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance is in power at the Centre.

“BJP government is being formed in Jharkhand and we will drive out these infiltrators,” Shah added on Sunday. “We will bring the law and return the land taken away from women. Hemant Soren, you have failed to provide security to the women of Jharkhand.”

The party manifesto also promises an end to the problem of leaked exam papers in public sector tests and pledges to create five lakh self-employment opportunities for the state’s youth over the next five years.

The BJP has promised transparent recruitment for 287,500 government positions. This would be taken up in the first cabinet meeting of the new government if the Hindutva party comes to power and at least 150,000 positions would be filled by November 2025, the manifesto claims.