Monday, June 01, 2009

Bihar yet to get money: Nitish Nitish Kumar


Nitish Kumar

New Delhi: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Sunday slammed the Union government, saying the State is yet to receive money for rehabilitation of last year’s Kosi flood victims.

Mr. Kumar said he again wrote a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh a week ago, making seven demands that included special rehabilitation package for the Kosi victims and special status for Bihar.

He dismissed statements that he had not sent any proposal to the Centre for rehabilitation, saying “a detailed proposal was sent in October last.” He also flayed the Centre for “twisting facts” to deny money for relief and rehabilitation of the flood victims.

“In April this year, we got a letter from the Centre, which said that it found that we already had surplus money in our calamity relief account and hence we owed only Rs. 500 crore to the Centre. So rest of the over Rs. 1000 crore given to us for relief work should be returned,” Mr. Kumar said.

The Centre had given a fund of over Rs.1000 crore to the State government for relief work. Later, the State government had demanded a separate package of Rs. 14, 800 crore for rehabilitation of the flood victims.

Mr. Kumar said Dr. Singh later called him up when he raised objections to the letter and assured him to get the issue re-examined.

“We are still waiting for the results. We are ready to give answer to their every query. Officers of the Bihar government had in fact visited the National Capital a number of times in this regard,” he added. — PTI

Source : The Hindu

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