Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday defended his government’s Badh Chala Bihar (Bihar moves forward) campaign launched last year and said the ‘Bihar@2025 vision document’ will guide successive governments in framing policies and programmes for development of the State.
“The Badh Chala Bihar campaign has proved to be a unique experiment as we have come to know about the people’s expectation from the government on development front,” he said
He was intervening on the IPR&D Minister in-charge Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh’s reply in the State Assembly to a starred question by the BJP MLA Sanjay Saragwi over the expenditure and related facts about the campaign.
The inputs collected from the people of 40,000 villages with population of 5000 or more were being compiled under the ‘Bihar@2025 vision document’, the Chief Minister said, adding it will prove to be a guide for the successive governments in formulating policies and programmes specific to the expectation of the masses.
The State government will release the ‘Bihar@2025 vision document’ and invite the Opposition to the function in this regard, he said.
The Chief Minister came down hard on the BJP for making the Badh Chala Bihar campaign, which was launched on June 11 last year, a “political” issue by first petitioning the Election Commission and then challenging it in the Patna High Court to get it shelved.
“As soon as we rolled out the Badh Chala Bihar campaign, the BJP suffered heart-rending grief,” he said castigating the Opposition party for leaving no stone unturned to get the campaign shelved.
The Chief Minister said the campaign was not an agenda of his party JD(U), but of the State government in strict public interest. Charging the BJP with dubbing the ‘Badh Chala Bihar’ campaign as wasteful expenditure and pre-electoral exercise by the ruling party, Mr. Kumar said his government was making genuine efforts to find out expectation of the people for incorporation in the Bihar@2025 vision document.
As soon as he criticised the BJP for allegedly stalling the ‘Badh Chala Bihar’ campaign, the Leader of Opposition Prem Kumar and his other colleagues jumped on their feet and protested against the Chief Minister’s remarks.
On another allegation by the BJP about expenditure of huge amount of money on advertisements, Mr. Kumar said the Bihar government’s budget and expenditure under this head was a fraction in comparison to the spending on publicity by the saffron party government in the States.
Earlier, replying to specific questions on expenditure incurred on the project, the IPR&D minister in-charge said Rs. 9.31 crore was spent on the campaign on the basis of actuals and payment was made on different dates and at different places against proposed expenditure of Rs. 14.56 crore. - PTI
