The Bihar Cabinet on Wednesday passed a resolution demanding a grant of "special category status" for the state. The demand for it gained much more momentum following the caste survey in the state. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar disclosed on social media that a resolution (prastaav) urging the Centre to accept the demand was passed at the cabinet meeting he chaired earlier in the day.
Citing the survey, Kumar outlined that Bihar was home to "94 lakh poor families", for the betterment of whom his government plans to launch schemes which would "incur an expenditure of nearly Rs 2.50 lakh crore". "We intend full implementation of these schemes in five years, since the amount required is huge. But, if the Centre helps us, we may accomplish the task much faster", Kumar wrote in his post.
What Bihar CM stated?
According to him, the 39 lakh families who are living in huts will also be provided permanent houses, for which an amount of Rs 1 lakh 20 thousand per family will be provided. "Since a huge amount of money is required for these works, a target has been set to complete them in 5 years. If Bihar gets the status of a special state by the Central Government, then we will complete this work in a very short time," Kumar said.
'Demanding special status since 2010'
He further said that his government has been demanding to give special state status to Bihar since 2010. "For this, an Adhikar rally was also held on November 24, 2012 at Gandhi Maidan in Patna and on 17 March 2013 at Ramlila Maidan in Delhi. On our demand, the then Central Government had also formed the Raghuram Rajan Committee for this, the report of which was published in September 2013, but even at that time the then Central Government did not do anything about it," he claimed.
The Chief Minister urged the Centre to give special state status to Bihar keeping in mind the interest of the people of the state.
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