Ending the fifth leg of his state-wide Seva Yatra amid growing criticism from the Opposition parties, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar returned to Patna on Saturday and self-assuredly emphasised the sustained usefulness of his on-the-spot inspection of development schemes in several districts.
With complaints galore about large chunks of the population deprived of welfare benefits being stopped from meeting him and that his direct public interactions were being stage-managed, the latest phase of Mr Kumar’s much-hyped tour remained as controversial as the previous ones. There were, however, fewer public protests at the venues of Mr Kumar’s public meetings and inspection programmes during this six-day phase.
In the flood-prone, poor Saharsa district, where the yatra’s fifth phase began on Monday, Mr Kumar inspected the progress of two under-construction bridges across the Kosi and famously vowed to return there in 2014 to inaugurate the bridges. When the trained engineer in him detected certain technical faults and poor quality in the construction of the Telwa bridge whose foundation stone he had himself laid in 2008, Mr Kumar ordered an inquiry.
In the middle of inspecting ongoing development projects and the functioning of welfare schemes, Mr Kumar met ordinary people seeking remedy of grievances in Saharsa, Bhagalpur and Banka districts. Interacting with the weavers communities, he said the state government would provide raw materials and other assistance to improve their financial condition. Mr Kumar told people of the various legislative and administrative measures taken up by his NDA government to ensure transparent governance and eradication of corruption.
But he also found time to attack the Congress-led central government for its allegedly step-motherly attitude towards Bihar. At Simri Bakhtiyarpur in Saharsa, Bihar Congress president Chaudhary Mehboob Ali Kaiser’s constituency, Kumar accused the UPA government of denying Bihar coal linkage and clearance for ethanol processing and of ignoring the Kosi tragedy of 2008.