A day after the Bihar Cabinet passed a proposal seeking special category status for the State, Deputy Chief Minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RLD) leader Tejashwi Yadav on Thursday asked the Central government to clarify its stand on the issue in the public domain.
“Bihar Chief Minister [Nitish Kumar] has demanded special category status for the State from the Central government several times but Prime Minister [Narendra Modi] has not been listening. If you [Modi-led government at the Centre] don’t want to give special status to Bihar, clarify your stand on the issue in public domain and then we will look into it and work in our own way for the development of Bihar,” said Mr. Yadav while speaking to media persons in Patna.
He further said: “Our government has done historic work like conducting the caste survey successfully in Bihar and hope that the caste census would be done in the country as well”.
“The Bihar government conducted the caste survey on its own and the efforts of our Chief Minister must be appreciated for this as due to him, we’ve obtained such a huge data of people, their caste and socio-economic profile,” the Deputy CM said while ruling coalition partner and ministerial colleague Vijay Kumar Choudhary, a JD(U) leader, flanked him on one side.
‘Quota hike in Ninth Schedule’
He also demanded that the Union government should immediately put the hike in reservation enacted recently in Bihar in the Ninth Schedule to “insulate” it from judicial intervention. The Ninth Schedule of the Constitution includes a list of Central and State laws that cannot be challenged in courts and was added by the Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951.
Earlier on Wednesday, Mr. Yadav’s father and RJD chief Lalu Prasad, before leaving for Delhi, had threatened to “unseat PM Narendra Modi’s government, if it would not grant the special category status to Bihar”.
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar too, of late, had demanded special category status to Bihar for greater “development and growth” of the State. “Bihar would do more development and shine if special category status will be granted to it by the Centre,” Mr. Kumar had said in the State Assembly during the winter session of the legislature.
‘Just political stunt’
Meanwhile, senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi said the demand for special category status to Bihar is sheer “political stunt”. “When the 14th Finance Commission has removed the very concept of special category status and then no State can avail this facility, passing a resolution to this effect by the State Cabinet doesn’t hold any meaning,” Mr. Modi said in a release to media persons.
“Even the Raghuram Rajan committee [formed in 2013 to measure the backwardness of different States], which was constituted on the initiative of Nitish Kumar by the then UPA government, had dismissed the demand of special category status to Bihar. When election time comes, he [Mr. Kumar] raises the issue of special category status to defame the Central government,” he said.
He opined: “For the last 75 years, the Congress, RJD or JD(U) have been ruling the State either individually or united but despite this if Bihar has been the most backward State of the country, only these parties and people are responsible for this.”
