Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on Sunday reiterated before Union home minister Amit Shah his long-standing demand that the state be granted special status and urged him to include increased caste-based quotas in the province in the ninth schedule of the Constitution to provide them immunity from judicial review.
Shah was in Patna to chair the 26th meeting of the Eastern Zonal Council and his meeting with Kumar was their first since the latter walked out of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) last year. The meeting was also attended by senior ministers from Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand.
Kumar said that Bihar needs ₹2.50 lakh crore to help uplift its poor people over the next five years.
“Bihar fulfils all the requisite criteria for special status. If the Centre gives Bihar special status, it will do this (uplift the poor) in less time. Despite development, we are behind the national average on several parameters,” he said.
States with special category status received higher funds from the Centre, which also gives them special tax benefits. No state has been granted this classification since the BJP came to power in 2014. Before that, 10 states were granted special category status.
“The CM urged the Centre to accord special status to Bihar in the meeting. Bihar has been raising the issue of special status to the state since 2010. The fresh demand was necessitated by findings of the caste survey carried out by the grand alliance government in the state,” the chief minister’s office said in a statement after the meeting.
{{/usCountry}}“The CM urged the Centre to accord special status to Bihar in the meeting. Bihar has been raising the issue of special status to the state since 2010. The fresh demand was necessitated by findings of the caste survey carried out by the grand alliance government in the state,” the chief minister’s office said in a statement after the meeting.
{{/usCountry}}Kumar also urged Shah to embed the increase in caste-bad quotas in the state from 50% to 65% in the ninth schedule, also a demand he has made earlier.
“The Bihar government conducted a caste survey from its resources and raised the reservation limit to 75%. We have requested the Centre to include two recently amended laws, which increase the caste-based quota in Bihar from 50% to 65%, in the ninth schedule of the Constitution for providing them immunity from judicial review,” he said.
The Bihar government last month, following a caste-based survey in the state, notified an increase in quota for reserved categories in education and government jobs, from 50% to 65%, joining only a handful of other states where the quantum of such reservation exceeds the 50% ceiling fixed by the Supreme Court.
The inclusion of laws in the ninth schedule gives them immunity from judicial review.
The BJP’s leader of opposition in the state, Vijay Kumar Sinha, said the Centre was providing the state with “all possible help”.
“No state gets special status now. The central government is providing all possible help. The Bihar government should not blame the Centre in a bid to hide its failures,” Sinha said.