Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, in a hard-hitting letter to Union finance minister Pranab Mukherji on Sunday said it was totally wrong to compare the financial package given to West Bengal with the one to Bihar earlier. "Special package has not been given to Bihar ... the way the central government has sought to justify its move by linking it (package to West Bengal) with the case of Bihar is totally out of context and misplaced," the CM wrote to FM.

Nitish was provoked to send this missive following a news report   which suggested that the FM modelled the West Bengal package exactly on the pattern of the Backward Regions Grant Fund given to Nitish Kumar government by UPA-1. Nitish said, "Facts should not be distorted to justify any action taken by the central government. The dispensation given to Bihar had arisen out of the provisions of the Bihar Reorganisation Act, and not because of some special package Bihar's relief was entirely a consequence of bifurcation of the state, which had robbed the state of vital mineral resources and a robust revenue stream."

The CM said with the Centre choosing to provide central assistance as a special plan to West Bengal for development of backward regions, "our case for giving special treatment to Bihar because of its economic and industrial backwardness stands all the more justified".

Highly-placed sources   that the state government has come to know that the FM pushed the package for West Bengal on the ground that Bihar too had been accorded such a package, which the CM wrote in his letter was not true. "This is both contrary to facts and undercuts the basic principles of fiscal federalism," he asserted.

He reminded the FM that repeated pleas by the state government to the Centre and the PM for according special category status to Bihar have not been accepted so far. In the index of economic backwardness and industrial progress, Bihar remains significantly below the national average, with per capita income 1/7th of the per capita income of Delhi and 1/3rd of the national average, he said.

"All viable fiscal models are based on the basic premise of political neutrality so far as devolution of funds are concerned. If Bihar's genuine demand of special category status is considered favourably, it would positively contribute in bringing Bihar in the national mainstream and aid in nation building," he wrote to Mukherjee with the hope that he would consider Bihar's case favourably.

Source : TOI,Patna