Patna, Dec 11:
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Sunday raised the issue of special status for Bihar at the Eastern Zonal Council (EZC) meeting chaired by Union Home Minister Amit Shah here. Kumar, while addressing the meeting, said the State Government had recently conducted a caste-based survey from its resources.
He had earlier led an all-party delegation to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and requested him to conduct a caste census at the national level. But it was not done leaving the State Government with no other option than to carry out the caste-based survey from its resources, he stated.
“Based on findings of the caste survey, we have decided to give Rs 1 lakh to poor landless families to purchase land and another Rs 1.20 lakh for construction of concrete house,” the Chief Minister said.
Kumar said Rs. 2 lakh each would also be given to all poor families, irrespective of their caste, who have no source of livelihood. A total of Rs 2.5 lakh crore would be required to meet the expenses against schemes being launched to ameliorate the condition of the poor and deprived, identified during the caste survey, he noted.
“If Bihar is given special status, it would help the state government to execute all these schemes much earlier. Otherwise, it would take at least five years,” Kumar said. The Chief Minister pointed out that he had been raising the special status demand for Bihar for long, but it was not accepted as yet.
He urged Shah to look into the demand seriously and do the needful. The Chief Minister said that the population of backward castes under various categories had increased which was reflected in the recent caste survey.
Taking into account their increased population, the Bihar Government had increased their reservation in state services from 50 to 65 percent. Simultaneously, a 10 per cent reservation for the poor among upper castes would continue as before, he said.
Kumar said after the recent decision on quota, total reservation in State Government services had increased from 60 to 75 percent. He urged Shah to include in the 9th schedule, the hike in reservation from 60 to 75 per cent.
Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Prasad Yadav, Finance Minister Vijay Kumar Chaudhary and Water Resources Minister Sanjay Kumar Jha participated in the meeting. Besides them, representatives of West Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand and chief secretaries of all the four states also took part in the deliberations.
