New Delhi, Aug. 18: The BJP was cock-a-hoop today about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's humongous package for poll-bound Bihar but, on record, its leaders denied any link between the Rs 1.25 lakh crore gift and the party's quest for victory in the upcoming polls.

"Back in 2013, Modiji had said if elected, he would give a Rs 50,000-crore package for Bihar. We worked out the system and the detailed outlays over the past months and concluded that the allocations deserved to be scaled up much more," said Dharmendra Pradhan, minister for petroleum and natural gas.

Out of the package, Rs 21,476 crore will be spent on oil and gas sector projects in the state. Bhupendra Yadav, the BJP's general secretary in charge of Bihar, said: "The message is Bihar needs to be robust and only the BJP can help the state achieve that goal. There is no hypocrisy or cynicism in our message, no matter what our opponents allege. We are fulfilling a long-standing commitment to the people."

When he was Gujarat chief minister, Modi's close aides said he argued that states must "work hard" to generate revenue and build their growth on the surpluses instead of "living off the Centre's doles". Other than granting a flood relief package to Jammu and Kashmir when it was devastated, as Prime Minister too Modi has resisted showering largesse on the states. But the Bihar election has too much at stake for Modi - a second successive loss after Delhi would all but ruin his close confidant Amit Shah's chances of getting a second term as BJP president, and it would be a shot in the arm for an already aggressive Congress. Sources in the party said the package - and the promise of taking Bihar heavenwards - was a tactic crafted to win over Bihar's youths.

The sources said the rallies the Prime Minister addressed in Bihar today recalled scenes from his Lok Sabha campaign, complete with shouts of "Modi, Modi" that were missing from his recent public appearances. "There is an aspirational class that could account for as much as 20 or even 25 per cent of the electorate. This is the constituency on our radar because the young voters are not encumbered by caste. They want a better quality of life in their state instead of having to migrate to faraway places," an official noted.

However, the experience of past elections shows that packages do not always guarantee a win. In 2014, when the UPA government had legislated the creation of a separate Telangana state out of Andhra, it unrolled a special package for the seven "backward" districts of Rayalaseema and north coastal Andhra with a thrust on agriculture, watershed, irrigation, drought mitigation, health, nutrition, education and industry. But that did not help the Congress salvage its declining fortunes in a state over which it had complete sway for 10 years.

The party was wiped out in Andhra as well as Telangana. Neither its role as catalyst for Telangana's creation nor the offer of big fiscal compensations helped.

In 2009, Rahul Gandhi's unswerving focus on Bundlekhand - a region that encompassed the poorest districts of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh - pushed the UPA to announce a Rs 7,266-crore package to be implemented over three fiscal years.

Before the 2012 Uttar Pradesh elections, the Congress in its campaign accused the then BSP government in the state of doing nothing with the money although Bundelkhand with a big Dalit population was traditionally a Mayawati stronghold. The Congress did not pick up a single seat in Bundelkhand. The spoils were more or less evenly shared by the BSP, Samajwadi Party and the BJP. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, every seat went to the BJP.

In the area of Bundelkhand in the Madhya Pradesh, too, the Congress had no luck. It remained with the BJP.

An exception to this trend was Maharashtra's Vidarbha. In 2006, the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced a Rs 3,750-crore package that included writing off farmers' debts worth Rs 712 crore. The Congress and its ally, the NCP, won most of the seats in the 2009 Lok Sabha as well as in the Assembly polls that year.

On Modi's Bihar package, Abhijit Sen, economics professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and a former Planning Commission member, said: "Elections are generally fought on issues other than packages. They don't matter. But the Bihar package is necessary for certain legal reasons because Nitish Kumar can legitimately say something substantial had to be given as part of the Bihar reorganisation framework (after Jharkhand became a state)."