Nitish talks of a 'new political formation'

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar is keen on cobbling up an informal or formal alliance with chief ministers of underdeveloped states to shore up his demand that the Centre grant the 'special category state' status to Bihar, Ashok Mishra reports.

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar is keen on cobbling up an informal or formal alliance with chief ministers of underdeveloped states to shore up his demand that the Centre grant the 'special category state' status to Bihar.

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"I will talk to the chief ministers of such states after the Bihar assembly winter session later this month. A new political formation is needed because only a few states have graduated to become the growth engines of the country. Others have turned into development-deficit states due to the Centre's flawed development policies," said Kumar on Saturday.

He was speaking at a function to release his government's report card and mark seven years in office.

Kumar promised road links to around 1,000 rural clusters with at least 250 people and claimed 25 million citizens had benefited from the law for 'timely delivery of public services'.

The government will construct 34,100-km roads in the next five years at a cost of Rs.23,881 crore, he said.

While Kumar said Bihar was making faster strides on the path of development, opposition leaders led by RJD's Lalu Prasad called the report card a sham.

Dubbing it "wasteful talks", Prasad said, "the truth is that law and order and education system have crumbled".

Kumar, meanwhile, blamed under reporting of the number of poor people as the main reason behind the 'non-success' of welfare schemes for the BPL section across the country. "Unless you have authentic data on the poor, how can the schemes meant for them succeed?" he said.