Patna, Feb. 22: Corruption and development formed the bulwark of the governor’s address to the legislature today, laying down the roadmap for the government for the next five years.

“While keeping up its resolve of growth with justice, the government is committed to put Bihar in the category of developed states in the next five years,” Governor Devanand Konwar said, reading out his speech before the gathering of the Assembly and Legislative Council members during the pre-lunch of the budget session that began today.

Konwar described corruption as the “biggest hurdle in the way of development” and enumerated a plethora of steps that the government had initiated to curb it in the state. The statement echoed that made by chief minister Nitish Kumar who had said a few days ago that corruption had driven the people across the country to rage. The speech highlighted the arrest of 498 public servants in connection with 393 trap cases, institution of nine cases against officials amassing property disproportionate to their known source of income and requesting permission from the special court to confiscate the ill-gotten assets of 18 corrupt officials.

Apart from dwelling at length on the NDA’s achievements in the first five years of its tenure, the speech was also loaded with numerous announcements reflecting the government’s vision for future and warranting upon ministers and officials to work hard to achieve them.

Among major announcements that the governor made are setting up of a super-specialty hospital, starting an MBBS course in the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) here, making all primary health centres across the state operational for 24 hours and putting the child-mother mortality rate and vaccination drive on a par with or even better than the national average.

Like in the health sector, the speech made a plethora of promises in the human resources, police, electricity, agriculture, tourism and forest and environment sectors too.

Given the promises, the state is all set to see the coming up of an engineering college named after poet Ramdhani Singh Dinkar at Begusarai, setting up polytechnic institutes in 28 districts, setting up of engineering/medical colleges in all the commissionaires and introducing bachelor of education (B.Ed) course in all the degree colleges in the next five years.

While recounting how the government had toned up its prosecuting agencies ensuring punishment to offenders under the speedy trial system in the last five years, the governor announced the appointment of 5,000 assistant sub-inspectors and 45,000 constables to achieve a parity with the national average in police-population ratio.

Emphasising the introduction of IT in agriculture, the speech promises e-farmers’ buildings in all the blocks of the state in the next five years besides giving one crore fruit plants to the farmers at a subsidized rate. The speech enumerated the measures being taken up for improving power supply in the state, which includes the transformation and modernisation of a 50 MW unit of the Barauni Thermal Power Station, 195 MW unit of the Kanti Thermal Power Station, setting up an additional gas power plant of 500 MW at Barauni besides building the 3300 MW power plant at Nabinagar (Aurangabad).

The speech also sets the target of creating the potential to irrigate 65,000 hectares of land during 2011-12 and creating a network of canals in the catchment areas of the rivers Gandak, Kosi, Sone, Durgawati, Chanan, Kamala and Bagmati.

The governor attributed the government’s increased capacity to raise internal resources as a major factor in making “remarkable achievements” in all the sectors.

His speech revealed that the government had raised over Rs 4,000 crore from sales tax during 2010-11 which was 24 per cent more than that of the previous year and even more than the budget (worth a little over Rs 3,000 crore) in 2004-05 that it got from its previous regime.