Patna: Speaking at a massive rally here, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Sunday said the Centre was discriminating against his state by denying the special status for which he had made repeated pleas and promised to fight till it was granted. Flanked by JD(U) national president Sharad Yadav, Kumar told the 'Adhikar' rally, at the culmination of months-long "Adhikar Yatras", at the historic Gandhi Maidan in Patna that the UPA government had never considered the issue 'sincerely'.
"After the Bihar Assembly passed an unanimous resolution for providing special category state status to Bihar in 2009, an all-party delegation repeatedly sought appointments with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, but it was not given," he alleged. The state legislative council also passed similar resolutions but it also did not yield any result, he said. "We continued to raise the issue at every platform, including in the National Development Council meeting, and even wrote letters to the PM but to no avail," he said.
Kumar appealed to the people to vote for only that party in the 2014 general elections which would promise to deliver the special category status. He demanded that the Centre set up a fresh committee to draw a strategy to provide special assistance to Bihar and other states who figure much below the national average in terms of per capita income, consumption of power, education, health among others to bring them into mainstream.
Kumar also announced that JD(U) would hold a massive rally in Delhi's Ramlila maidan in March next year, to put pressure on the Centre to grant the special status which, he said, would pull the state at par with the national level on development indexes. With the rally considered as an exercise by Kumar to showcase his mass appeal among people before the 2014 general elections, he said, "People of Bihar who have significantly contributed to the development of the country are no longer ready to accept this neglect and will fight the injustice."
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