New steps: Nitish

Patna, Aug. 9: The Green Bihar Campaign of the JD(U) aims at introducing a novelty in the state politics. Chief minister Nitish Kumar would inaugurate it at his native village Kalyanbigha in Nalanda district on Thursday.

Nitish had been working on the nitty-gritty of the campaign for the past one year. According to its stipulations, the JD(U) workers would plant 50 lakh trees in the villages across the state.

It is linked to the party’s membership drive also. The JD(U) has planned to make 50 lakh party members who are supposed to plant a tree each and maintain it to be the JD(U) cadre. “The party workers are supposed to buy the saplings either from the government or the private nurseries. The party has taken up the novel programme to change the political culture of the state,” the state party chief, Basishtha Narayan Singh, said.

The Green Bihar Campaign, aimed at building Nitish’s image in all sections of society, would coincide with his main rival Lalu Prasad’s march on the city streets against the police firing at Forbesganj in June in which five persons belonging to a minority community were killed.

The RJD boss’s campaign is, apparently, aimed at bringing the Muslims back to the RJD fold, which thrived on the M-Y (Muslim-Yadav) during its days in power. The Green Bihar Campaign is also aimed at strengthening the JD(U)’s base, but in a noble way. Old socialists term the campaign as a leaf taken from Nitish’s icon and socialist stalwart Ram Manohar Lohia’s book.

That the programme is Nitish’s well thought out venture is evident from the fact that two environment experts — R.P. Singh and Lala Prasad — have been drafted to guide the workers about the suitability of plants in a particular area. The emphasis is on planting fruit producing trees.

Sources close to the chief minister said he would personally monitor what he has described to his partymen as his “most favourite” programme. It follows a four-month signature campaign for the special category status to Bihar. According to the party’s strategists, the signature campaign was a “big success”.

Nitish would try to give a bigger message through the programme. “Bihar is woefully short in forest cover after the separation of Jharkhand from it. The programme aims to cover 30 per cent of the state land with forest,” a leader close to Nitish said. “It will be liked and loved by one and all. The eco-friendly programme suits the interest of all sections of the society,” he added.

The chief minister, deviating from the conventional politics to group and regroup the castes to win the elections in the caste conscious state, has taken several measures in the past to broaden his support base beyond the caste boundary. Distributing cycles to Class VIII and IX students and paying Rs 50,000 to each student clearing the IIT entrance examination are a few of them.