Nitish writes a book seeking special status for Bihar

Patna, May 13: Apparently annoyed with the Centre for giving preferential treatment to other states and ignoring the interests of Bihar, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has written a book mentioning as to why the state should be granted special status.

It took almost a year for Kumar to write the book christened as "Special Category Status: A Case for Bihar" after his relentless efforts to get the special category status to Bihar failed.

"Yes, I have written a book on the conditions prevailing in the state and to convince the nation about the need for granting special status to Bihar...you will come to know about the details once it is published," Kumar said.

The printer and publisher of the 80 page book is Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI), an NGO.

The book would be released by well known economist and writer Lord Meghnad Desai on May 15.

A senior official attached with the Chief Minister secretariat said that Kumar decided to pen a book when the Centre did not pay any heed to repeated demands for granting special status to Bihar.

Immediately after taking the reins of Bihar in November 2005 Kumar had got a resolution unanimously adopted by the state Assembly seeking special status category and had conveyed it to the Centre.

"The Chief Minister is understood to have highlighted the delaying tactics of the Centre in granting the special category status to Bihar which he was trying to develop with scant resources at his disposal," the official said.

Poverty and backwardness are not new to Bihar. Other states are also facing these problems but the Centre accorded special status to many such states to help them grow, the officer added.

The book is understood to have blamed the Centre for the "sluggish growth" of the state due to poor flow of institutional finance and inadequate Central assistance.

Bureau Report