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| MLCs Jyoti Kumari and Chandan Bagchi protest against a series of abductions, outside the Legislative Council in Patna on Thursday. Picture by Deepak Kumar |
Patna, March 1: Deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi today said Bihar is the “fastest growing” among the Indian states despite Centre “resorting to step-motherly treatment” to the eastern region for several decades.
Modi’s assertion in the state Assembly came as a reply during the two-day debate on the annual budget (2012-13).
“The state has moved faster than several western and southern states, bracketed as developed ones on many parameters of growth,” Modi said.
“The state has made record of sorts by producing 67 lakh metric tonne of paddy this year,” he said, refuting the Opposition’s arguments that good monsoon has led to a better yield of paddy. “We had many good monsoons in the past. But why did the state fail to register such a record production in our living memory?” he asked.
The deputy chief minister added: “The government’s efforts with the agriculture set up and farmers’ work have played the decisive role in augmenting paddy yield.”
Modi, who is also the finance minister, said: “Bihar’s per capita income is 40 per cent against the national per capita income. But it was only 36 per cent against the national average of per capita income when Nitish Kumar-led NDA assumed power in 2005-06. He challenged the Opposition to “show any other state, which has registered a growth of four per cent in its per capita income in five-six years”.
Modi enumerated many areas in which the state had registered a “phenomenal growth” in six years of the NDA rule. “Bodhgaya has drawn 59,785 tourists from across the world in 2011-12, still left with two more months in completion of the financial year, against an average of 5,000 to 7,000 international tourists in the past years.”
Claiming that Bihar had led India in becoming polio free, Modi said the state had 33 cases of polio till 2008. “The state brought it down to only nine in 2010. The state is free from the scourge of polio now in 2011,” Modi said.
