Bihar govt passes 40 proposals, including special status for state from Centre

Patna: The Nitish Kumar government passed 40 proposals including the demand for a special status for Bihar by the Centre during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

The state government has also demanded a fund of Rs 2,50,000 crore from the Centre for the implementations of various projects.

Following the cabinet meeting, Nitish Kumar on his official social media handle X said: “During the meeting of a cabinet, we have passed a proposal to give special status to Bihar and requested the Centre to meet the same.”

“This is the first time that the Bihar government has conducted a caste based survey in the state. On that basis, we have enhanced the reservation for the people of Bihar who come under Extremely Backward Caste (EBC), Other Backward Castes (OBC), Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST), they will get the benefit of reservation up to 65%. Earlier, the reservation in Bihar was 50%. Ten percent reservation was given to economically weaker sections in upper castes. This will help candidates in the admission to various educational institutions as well as in government jobs,” Kumar posted.

“People coming under EBC had 18% reservation in the past. After this bill, the Bihar government has enhanced the reservation to 25%. Similarly, the OBC category with 12% reservation will get 18%. The SC had 16% reservation in the past and will get 20% now and the ST having 1% reservation will get 2%,” he said.

Additional chief secretary in the cabinet secretariat S. Shidhartha, said: “We have sent two proposals to the Centre including special status for Bihar and reservation up to 65% under Article 9. It will help us as no one would challenge this in court.”

“As per the caste based survey, 94 lakh families are in the poor category and hence the state government has passed a proposal to provide Rs 2 lakh in instalments to one person of such families below the poverty line; 63,850 families are houseless and landless in Bihar and the state government has decided to give Rs 1 lakh to each of the families to purchase land. Earlier, the state government was giving only Rs 60,000. Besides, 39 lakh families are living in huts and the state government will provide Rs 1.20 lakh to each of them for the construction of concrete houses,” Shidhartha said.

“The expenses are expected to go up and hence we have been demanding from the Centre to provide Rs 2, 50,000 crores to complete these projects,” he said.