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In line with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s demands, Bihar got abundant financial and industrial support in the Union budget. This comes at a time the state is inching closer to Assembly polls, scheduled for 2025.
Speaking to The Indian Express, JD(U) advisor and chief national spokesperson K C Tyagi said “we are very happy with what Bihar got”.
He said there was no point reading too much into the Centre not considering special status for the state. “Let the Opposition cry foul over it. The idea is to ensure development of Bihar. An annual package of Rs 1 lakh crore has made a good start for us,” he said.
“When a TMC leader calls it a ‘Bihari budget’, it means special care is taken of Bihar. What a special category status (for the state) would have done is to create employment and discourage migration, besides addressing poverty. All the projects, especially making Bihar a part of the Kolkata-Amritsar economic zone with its headquarters in Gaya, announced today would generate employment.”
“We got approval for an airport and a medical college, locations for which will be decided by the state government. Besides, we also got Patna-Purnia, Bodhgaya-Vaishali and Bhagalpur-Buxar highway projects,” he said.
The Purvodaya project, which concentrates on development of the eastern region of the country, is among announcements expected to help the state.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that on the Amritsar-Kolkata Industrial Corridor, there will be an industrial node at Gaya, “which will serve as a good model for developing ancient centre of cultural importance to future centres of modern economy”.
The government will also support road connectivity projects, including Patna-Purnea Expressway, Buxar-Bhagalpur Expressway, Bodhgaya, Rajgir, Vaishali and Darbhanga spurs, and an additional two-lane bridge over river Ganga at Buxar at a total cost of Rs 26,000 crore.
Power projects, including setting up of a new 2400 megawatt plant at Pirpainti, will be taken up at a cost of Rs 21,400 crore. “New airports, medical colleges and sports infrastructure in Bihar will be constructed,” Sitharaman said.
Bihar will also be provided with additional allocation to support capital investments. “The requests of the Bihar government for external assistance from multilateral development banks will be expedited,” Sitharaman said.
As Bihar has frequently suffered from floods, a budget of Rs 11,500 crore has been set aside “for the Kosi-Mechi intra-state link and 20 other ongoing and new schemes including barrages, river pollution abatement and irrigation projects”.
Besides this, the Union government will support the development of Nalanda as a tourist centre, and Nalanda university will be revived to its former “glorious stature”.
Nalanda will have a Saptarshi corridor clubbing Buddhist, Jain and other religious sites on the lines of the Ayodhya and Kashi Corridor. Gaya’s Buddhist pilgrimage site of Mahabodhi Temple will be also developed as a religious corridor, the minister said.
