Bihar Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sushil Modi on Friday slammed Nitish Kumar over the issue of special status to the State, claiming that an inter-ministerial panel had rejected the notion two years ago and the Chief Minister was “misleading” the people of the state.
“Mr. Kumar is misleading the people of Bihar by blaming the NDA government for not according special status to the state .... Was not the notion of special status emphatically rejected by Raghuram Rajan-led inter-ministerial panel two years ago during UPA rule?” he asked.
Instead of blaming the NDA government, Mr. Kumar should ask Congress president Sonia Gandhi why her party’s government had rejected special status demand by Bihar, he said in a statement.
The NDA had on the other hand loosened its purse strings for development of Bihar with Prime Minister Narendra Modi announcing Rs 1.65 lakh crore special package for the state last month, he said.
Moreover, the Centre will provide Rs 4.08 lakh crore to Bihar from the divisible pool of tax resources on the basis of 14th Finance Commission recommendations over the next five years, he said.
The funds made available to Bihar under the two heads was much more than funds which accrued to it under special status, he claimed.
In addition, the Centre has provided 30 per cent income tax depreciation for private investors in 21 districts of the state and will also give about Rs 24,000 crore to local bodies over the next five years.
He trashed Mr Kumar’s charge that the special package announced by the Prime Minister was “repackaging of old schemes” and demanded that the Chief Minister explain which projects under the special package were old ones.
Mr. Sushil Modi, a former deputy chief minister, also attacked Mr. Kumar for bringing the Congress on board the grand secular alliance to prevent NDA from coming to power in the state in the forthcoming assembly poll.
He alleged that the former Prime Mminister Rajiv Gandhi had announced Rs 5,000 crore package for Bihar ahead of 1989 Assembly polls but “conveniently” put it in cold storage later for which the Chief Minister should seek an answer from Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
Charging Mr. Kumar with having failed to fulfil “even a single promise”, he ridiculed him for writing to Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in a bid to brush under carpet failures of his government.
The people of Bihar have seen through the designs of Mr. Kumar to mislead them for another yet term in power, he claimed and added that the electorate had made up its mind to repose faith in NDA so that Bihar got a government which can work in tandem with the Centre to take it on the path of development and prosperity. -- PTI
