Patna: Claiming that the UPA government has rejected the special status demand for Bihar as it did not figure on the Raghuram Rajan panel's agenda, the RJD supremo Lalu Prasad mocked Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and the JD(U) for proclaiming victory after release of the report.
“The Raghuram Rajan panel did not have special status demand by Bihar in its terms of reference for consideration and nor has it said anything on the issue.
It amazes me to no end as to what the chief minister and his party - JD(U) - celebrated for today,” Prasad told reporters.
As far as he was concerned, the Centre has rejected the demand for grant of special status to Bihar, Prasad said.
The Raghuram Rajan panel report has made a case for ending the ‘special category' criteria for providing additional assistance to poorer states and ranked Odisha and Bihar the least advanced states.
The RJD supremo sought to pour cold water on Kumar's celebrations saying that he wanted to fool the people and keep alive their aspiration for special status to get votes in Lok Sabha polls next year and assembly election a year later.
However, Prasad said Kumar would not succeed in this designs as all round failures of his government stood exposed.
Prasad said the panel classified the states in three groups of developed, less developed and least developed states with a recommendation to the Centre to make additional funds available to those states in the latter two categories.
By putting the states in three categories the panel has diluted importance of special category status as those states in such group may be assessed together with other states on development paradigm and their financial requirements will be reviewed accordingly in future, he said.
On the Chief Minister's stand that the panel report has given a boost to the state's case, the RJD supremo said, with as many as 10 states figuring in the least developed category, it would be difficult to accommodate aspirations of all such states.
“The special status issue is a pandora's box which will be difficult for any central government to fulfil,” he said and denied that the Congress-led UPA government has betrayed the aspirations of people of Bihar.
