The Congress and BJP have promised to provide rice and wheat at subsidised rates for the BPL families of Jharkhand where five-phase Assembly polls begin from November 25.

While the Congress has promised to bring down the price of rice and wheat to Rs 3 each per kg, the BJP has made a commitment to sell rice and wheat at Re 1 each per kg and iodised salt at 25 paise per kg. The two parties released their manifestos on Thursday.

The Congress manifesto vows to provide five lakh jobs though self-employment schemes and two lakh jobs in Home Guards and Forest Guards on remuneration basis. However, during the Soren and the Koda governments backed by the Congress, not one self-employment scheme was successfully implemented.

The Congress also promises electrification of villages under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojna and aims to cover every BPL family under the health insurance scheme of Rs 30,000 each. To deal with the law and order problem and the Naxalite menace, the Congress manifesto states: “The law machinery will be so used that every citizen finds his life and property secured.”

The BJP manifesto has made a number of other promises, including holding a social audit of the performance of its MLAs, disclosing the expenditure incurred by them under the MLA area development fund and providing 10 lakh jobs to youths through self-employment schemes in the next five years.