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Gloves off as BJP woos Hindu vote

Agencies
India's main opposition party, tipped to form the next government, appears to be returning to its Hindu nationalist roots at the start of a five-week general election, raking up divisive issues and using strong language in its election campaign.
Criss-crossing the country for months before the first phase of voting began on Monday, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its candidate for prime minister, Narendra Modi, had mainly campaigned on a ticket of better governance, economic development and job creation.
But just hours after voting started, the election commission demanded an explanation from Modi's chief aide Amit Shah, accusing him of incendiary speeches in towns of Muzaffarnagar in the state of Uttar Pradesh where dozens of people, mostly Muslims, were killed in Hindu-Muslim riots last year.
Shah, Modi's closest confidante and key political manager, was in the eye of a storm at the weekend after reportedly
telling supporters to see India's parliamentary polls as an opportunity for "revenge" against the left-leaning ruling Congress party.
Shah is also charged in 2010 with the extra-judicial killing of Muslims accused of terrorism when he was the interior minister in Gujarat. He denies the charges and is free on bail. Modi himself
is also accused of failing to stop the killing of Muslims in riots in Gujarat in 2002.
The BJP has said the charges are trumped up at the behest of the Congress party and he is expected to hold a senior government position if Modi becomes prime minister.
Analysts say the decision to play on
religious sentiments may be a last-minute attempt to woo some blocs of Hindu voters.
And BJP's election promise of building a Ram Mandir at the disputed site in Ayodhya did not hold much weight even in the temple town as prominent seers dismissed it as a 'political gimmick' and accused the party of trying to create a wedge between communities.
Acharya Satyendra das, head priest of the makeshift Ram Janmabhoomi temple, said it was "wrong" to link Ram Mandir - which was a matter of faith -with elections.
The long-awaited also manifesto includes it's commitments to draft a “uniform civil code" - legislation that would withdraw the rights of India's 150 million Muslims to follow their religionbased law. It also says it would move to end the special autonomous status accorded to Jammu and Kashmir, the disputed Himalayan former princedom.
Both Modi and Rajnath Singh, the party's president, said the manifesto's release was not simply a formality but a “pledge".