Nitish Kumar at the Assembly on Monday. Picture by Nagendra Kumar Singh

Patna, April 2: Chief minister Nitish Kumar will take up the issue of Delhi and Maharashtra police picking up youths from minority community in Bihar without apprising state police at the chief ministers’ meet on National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) in New Delhi on April 16.

He made the statement in reply to a call attention by RJD MLA Chandrashekhar who said youths from a minority community were being picked up from Bihar by Delhi and Maharshtra police. “These youths are generally declared innocent after a gap of 10 years. But it not only ruins their lives but also defames the community,” the MLA said.

The chief minister said even during his speech made in the defence of the governor’s speech in the Assembly last month, he had mentioned his opposition to such arrests. “The state police are kept in the dark and it creates a law and order problem,” he said, stressing that he resented christening of youths caught in the state as “Bihar or Darbhanga module”. “I have even written to the Centre against the trend and stressed the local police should be informed about the arrest,” he said.

Another JD(U) MLA, Ramdhani Singh, brought up the issue of the “mysterious death” of a final-year engineering college student, Sujit Kumar, in Ajmer, Rajasthan. The MLA alleged that the student, a resident of Buxar district, had been harassed by the engineering college authorities and demanded a probe. However, minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary said the student had failed in the examination and had committed suicide. However, the MLA alleged that the college authorities had not allowed Sujit to sit for a supplementary examination in the subject in which he had scored poorly. Nitish said since the matter was inter-state, he would ask the Bihar director-general of police to get in touch with his Rajasthan counterpart and get the matter probed.

Sugar industry minister Awadhesh Kumar Kushwaha was caught in a tight corner when JD(U) MLA Manjit Kumar Singh raised a question of Rs 85-crore subsidy for giving seeds, pesticides and other inputs to sugarcane farmers going to sugar mill owners instead of the farmers. “The funds released between 2009 and 2011 was still lying with the sugar mill owners and have not been handed over to the farmers,” Singh alleged. Speaker Uday Narain Choudhary directed the minister to get the charges made by the MLA probed.

Health minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey was conspicuous by his absence when a question regarding financial irregularities in Darbhanga Municipal College and Hospital surfaced.

The question was raised by Sanjay Sarogi of the BJP.