Patna, July 11: The ambitious "Badh Chala Bihar-Bihar 2025" initiative of the Nitish Kumar government resumed on Friday after a gap of 20 days following a stay imposed on the same by the Election Commission of India on June 20.
The commission had imposed the ban on this programme - being executed by the information and public relations department - upon complaint from the BJP alleging violation of model code of conduct for the Legislative Council elections. The poll code was lifted on Friday following declaration of results.
"As per the commission's directive related to model code of conduct, we had kept the activities under Badh Chala Bihar campaign suspended over the past 20 days. However, the campaign has been resumed and all activities under it are getting expedited to ensure that it gets completed before the Assembly election code of conduct is made effective (expected next month)," said a senior official in the department.
"Badh Chala Bihar-Bihar 2025" campaign was launched by Nitish on June 9. Claimed to be the world's largest inclusive governance programme, it is designed and getting executed by Citizens for Accountable Governance under contract with the IPRD.
Citizens for Accountable Governance is a team of young professionals, including the IIT and IIM graduates, who are led by Prashant Kishor, the key strategist behind the campaign for Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of last year's Lok Sabha elections.
A number of high-tech trucks, "Janbhagidari Manch", were seen in Patna and several other districts on Friday. In total, 400 trucks equipped with gadgets and gizmos, including GPS, LED panels, microphones and music system among others are proposed to criss-cross the districts to hold 40,000 village-level meetings to collect the development aspirations of each village over the next two months.
Apart from Janbhagidari, work is also being done under Jigyasa, which is the second initiative under Badh Chala Bihar-Bihar 2025 campaign. Jigyasa is basically a paper writing competition inviting academia, students and research scholars to conduct a primary research tour across Bihar and present their findings in detailed research papers.
The registration process for Jigyasa, which started from June 12, has been extended from July 5 to July 18.
