On Lok Sabha poll eve, Niti Aayog chants ‘बिहार में बहार है’
NITI Ayog
By Our Special Correspondent
New Delhi, January 18: In a curious signal ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi-headed Niti Aayog has lauded Bihar for being the state with the second highest reduction in poverty. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is being seen by political observers to be giving mixed signals ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
The NITI Aayog released a discussion paper on the reduction of poverty in the country. The Niti Aayog said that Bihar after Uttar Pradesh recorded highest number of reduction in number of poor in the last nine years.
The discussion paper released by the Niti Aayog said: “The fastest reduction in the number of multidimensional poor was observed in the States of Uttar Pradesh followed by Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan. Uttar Pradesh registered the largest decline in the number of poor with 5.94 crore people escaping multidimensional poverty during the last nine years followed by Bihar at 3.77 crore and Madhya Pradesh at 2.30 crore.”
This discussion paper has become an election template for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Centre. Modi has said that the NITI Aayog ‘report’ has revealed an emergence of neo middle class in the country. The BJP is trumpeting the claims made in the paper for the electioneering purposes.
But the BJP may find itself in a spot in Bihar where the same NITI Aayog paper credits for second largest reduction in number of poor. Kumar has been the chief minister of Bihar since 2005 except for a few months when Jitan Ram Manjhi had succeeded him.
With the NITI Aayog admitting that the Bihar chief minister has been able to reduce poverty in the state at such a largescale, the BJP may struggle to attack Kumar if he contests the Lok Sabha elections as a part of Mahagathbanfhan’. The Bihar chief minister has also gone on an overdrive to fill the vacancies in the government departments.
Recetntly while addressing a function to mark the distribution of the appointment letters to teachers, Kumar had said “I want to tell journalist friends here that they should know the magnitude of good work our government has done in the state. They may not say or write about, but they should know the achievements of the Bihar government. We don’t indulge in disinformation like others”.
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