Residents of Purnea surround a bag containing applications submitted during chief minister Nitish Kumar’s janata darbar on Friday. Picture by Mohan Mahato

Purnea, Jan. 6: Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar today held a janata darbar at Indira Gandhi Stadium in Purnea as part of his ongoing Seva Yatra.

More than 5,000 applicants turned up with their grievances at the darbar which went on for three hours.

At the darbar, most of the applications were related to land disputes.

After going through a few applications, Nitish told an applicant: “The state government has taken land disputes seriously. It has been dealing with the problems and is working on solutions. You should be patient till the solutions arrive.”

Nitish then asked the officer concerned to take action in the cases that have come up at the darbar.

After hearing a plea of a mother whose 11-year-old child Sakshi is bed-ridden, the chief minister said: “You will be helped under the chief minister’s health scheme if your family income is less than Rs 1 lakh a year. You should apply for the scheme through the civil surgeon of Purnea so that your application reaches the health department in Patna.”

The Telegraph had reported about Sakshi’s health last year when her parents demanded mercy killing for the child after they lost all hope of her recovery.

The parents claimed they had no money to treat Sakshi.

Regarding the launch of city bus service, the divisional manager of Bihar State Road Transport Corporation (BSRTC), Bhagwan Prasad, said: “The inauguration programme has been extended till tomorrow morning. The programme was extended because of the busy schedule of the chief minister who is expected to flag off the service.”

He added: “Purnea would get 15 city buses tomorrow. Five have arrived in the district. These would connect all 14 blocks of the district to the town. The remaining 10 would arrive by the end of this month.”

After Nitish left the stadium, a sack filled with applications left at one corner of the stadium raised quite a few eyebrows.

The bag contained hundreds of applications collected during the darbar today. A few residents, who had come with their grievances to the darbar saw the bag and raised an alarm.

“We submitted our application at the chief minister’s darbar with the hope that our grievances would be looked into by officials concerned. When we see our applications stuffed in a sack lying in a corner of the stadium, we doubt the claim that ‘actions’ would be taken in our cases,” said Shanti Niketan Haata, an applicant.

District public relations officer V.N. Singh said: “The last bag containing the applications was in the stadium. Later, officials took it to the assigned place. While ferrying the bags outside the stadium the officials might have been away for sometime from the last bag when the applicants sighted it. It is not a matter of negligence in anyway.”