Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar is caught in a peculiar situation ~how to convince the masses about his new innings with the NDA in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. As such, the chief minister is yet to get anything from the NDA government at the Centre which he could project as his “achievement” and thereby proving the rightness of his decision to dump the previous Grand Alliance which he headed.
Kumar had gone back to the company of the BJP with much fanfare in July last year claiming the “double-engine” government would push development works in the state. Ironically, not a single demand made by the CM himself in the past over a year has been fulfilled so far, making the common question his purpose in rejoining the NDA.
The latest embarrassment has come in the form of open rejection of his demand for granting Special Category status to Bihar by the 15th Finance Commission which paid a two-day visit to the state this week. For the past several months, the state government had been preparing the draft of a memorandum to be submitted to the 15th Finance Commission to seek for special category status for Bihar by raising strong grounds.
But in one stroke, the Finance Commission headed by NK Singh politely rejected his demand which has been the main political agenda of the JD-U for the past over a decade. “Deciding on the special status demand is not a part of our mandate and doesn’t come under our purview. We will not transgress our mandate,” Commission chairman Singh informed the state government yesterday adding this issue must be examined by an independent body.
The rejection of this demand came even though the chief minister in his speech cited some strong grounds behind granting special category status to the state. “Bihar is a land-locked state, falls in the seismic zone, has 70 percent of its area prone to floods and there is no investment in trade and industry like the coastal regions,” was how the chief minister reasoned but they all went in vain.
What, though, hurt the government was open rejection of his demand.
“Instead of stating that this demand is out of jurisdiction of the Finance Commission, its chairman should have told the state government that he would apprise the Centre of this demand and request for looking into this. That would have conveyed a good message among the masses,” said a JDU leader wishing not to be quoted.
Earlier, the chief minister had sought for a financial assistance of Rs 7,636 crores from the centre against massive damage caused by monthlong floods last year which affected 1.71 crore population settled across 19 Bihar district. Much to the state government shock, however, Bihar was granted about Rs 1200 cr.
The same year in October, the chief minister sought for granting central university status to the Patna University, once known as the “Oxford of the East” when PM Narendra Modi arrived here to attend its centenary celebrations.