UPA extends Rs 12,000 crore olive branch to Bihar

The UPA government is set to offer an olive branch to Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar who had recently taken potshots at Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Apr 17, 2013, 22:27:54 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The UPA government is set to offer an olive branch to Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar who had recently taken potshots at Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, who is being projected as BJP’s prime ministerial candidate.

Kumar had been running a coalition government in Bihar with participation of BJP for the last eight years. On Sunday, Kumar took a dig at Modi inviting stark reaction from the BJP, thereby putting the coalition under stress.

Amid this political uncertainty, the UPA government has fast-tracked its proposal to allocate Rs 12,000 crore in the 12th five year plan (2012-17) to Bihar as a special plan under revamped Backward Regions Grant Fund (BRGF).

The Union Cabinet on Thursday is expected to take a call on the proposal doubling the allocation for Bihar under BRGF from about Rs 5,700 crore in the 11th five year plan.

Bihar is a beneficiary under new BRGF as the parameters to define backwardness of a state has been revised to “holistically” deal with socio-economic deprivations. As a result, entire Bihar is covered under the special plan.

Government sources said that once the cabinet decides the money will be released after examining the developmental proposals from the state. Of the total money, Bihar has already received Rs 1,500 crore in 2012-13 and is would get Rs 2,000 crore in the current financial year. “Remaining amount of Rs 8,500 crore will be released in the next three years,” an official said.

The money is still less than Rs 20,000 crore demanded by Kumar, who however, has already expressed his satisfaction over the proposal.

The Cabinet is also expected to agree with another demand of the Bihar CM to provide flexibility in spending of money provided by the Central government under Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CCS). The proposal before the Cabinet allows the state governments flexibility to use of up to 10% of the funds as per local needs. For that, the states would have to issue guidelines in consultation with the scheme implementing Central ministries.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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