Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and RJD president Lalu Prasad on Sunday attack the Centre for not selecting any city of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in the list of 20 chosen for converting them into smart city.
“Bihar and UP gave 104 Lok Sabha seats to BJP to form its government at the Centre, but they are so Ehsaan pharamosh (ungrateful) that no city of the two states figures in the list of 20 smart cities,” Mr. Kumar said at a function here.
He said before election BJP had promised to create 100 smart cities. “But now we see it has come down to just 20, with none from either Bihar or UP.”
Mr. Prasad, who was present at the function to begin work on a bridge over Ganga to connect Patna and Raghopur, the idea of smart city and said he was in favour of “smart villages”.
Mr. Kumar said like Mr. Prasad he too during election his 218 election rallies had spoken in favour of “smart villages".
He reiterated his government’s commitment to ban liquor phase-wise from April 1. “Whatever country and spiced liquor is left will be burnt a night before April 1, when prohibition on the two would be total.”
Referring to the law and order situation in the state, the chief minister said “rule of law is prevailing and will continue so.”
“Everybody have been told in clear cut terms that rule of law is prevailing and law will take its own course,” he said apparently referring to involvement of some people connected with coalition parties in law breaking.
Union Agriculture Minister and senior BJP leader Radha Mohan Singh, too, took a swipe at the ruling alliance over Prasad’s presence at official functions.
“There are three CMs in Bihar. One is ‘super CM’ (Lalu), another a CM (Kumar) and third is ‘Deputy CM’ (Tejaswi),” Mr. Singh told reporters here as he pointed to the RJD chief’s presence at the government event today and at a function of homoeopathy doctors on Saturday in place of his son Tej Pratap Yadav, the State Health Minister.
Tejaswi Yadav, in his address at today’s event, took potshots at BJP, saying, “They (BJP) have been raising controversy over this programme for the past 3-4 days. The bridge over Ganga is being built purely by the state government and if they (BJP) are getting a pain in their stomach, I can do nothing about that.”
Mr. Prasad said the construction of the bridge by 2020 would lead to a turnaround in Raghopur’s fortunes as many industries and ancillary units would come up there as a result.
The bridge would cost Rs 5,000 crore of which the Bihar government has raised Rs. 3,000 crore through a loan from the Asian Development Bank, officials said.
Here's the list:
Smart cities
- 1 Bhubaneswar, Odisha
- 2 Pune, Maharashtra
- 3 Jaipur, Rajasthan
- 4 Surat, Gujarat
- 5 Kochi, Kerala
- 6 Ahmedabad, Gujarat
- 7 Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh
- 8 Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh
- 9 Solapur, Maharashtra
- 10 Davangere, Karnataka
- 11 Indore, Madhya Pradesh
- 12 New Delhi Municipal Corporation
- 13 Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu
- 14 Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh
- 15 Belagavi, Karnataka
- 16 Udaipur, Rajasthan
- 17 Guwahati, Assam
- 18 Chennai, Tamil Nadu
- 19 Ludhiana, Punjab
- 20 Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh
