An international convention centre, on the pattern of the one at Rajgir in Nalanda district, will come up in Bodhgaya.

A decision to this effect was taken during a high-level review meeting of the tourism department chaired by chief minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday evening.

Sharing details of the meeting on Friday, chief secretary Anjani Kumar Singh said the proposed convention centre would have a capacity to accommodate 2,000 people at a time and it would have all the facilities that the Rajgir centre boasts of.

'The need of the convention centre was being felt as no such facility is available at Bodhgaya for organising any big events,' Singh said. He also revealed that Rs 100 crore had been earmarked for the project, the plan for which had already been approved.

The chief secretary also revealed that the land near Venuvan, a place related to life of Lord Buddha in Rajgir, would be developed along with recreational facilities. 'Several people come to visit Venuvan and availability of good recreational facilities would allow them to spend quality time there,' Singh said.

On decisions taken in the review meeting of the labour resource department held on Friday, the chief secretary said the state was going to have a new Act in place to tighten the noose around placement agencies duping job aspirants. Principal labour resource secretary Dipak Kumar Singh said the new Act would be in place within three months and it would have provisions to ensure stringent action against such agencies.

The Friday meeting, which the chief minister chaired, also decided to create a corpus fund of Rs 5 crore in the labour resource department from which funds would be provided for the financial security of child labourers in Bihar.

The Bihar government has come up with a scheme under which a fixed deposit of Rs 25,000 is made in the name of a rescued child labourer till s/he attains the age of 18 years. The matured amount is given to rescued child labourers as soon as they attain 18 years of age. Till now, the money used to be given from the Chief Minister's Relief Fund but now the responsibility would lie with the labour resource department.

The state data shows 3,200 child labourers being rescued since 2014 and so far, 860 of them have been given financial assistance.

Nitish was also apprised of the progress made in Kushal Yuva Programme (KYP), which entails adding soft skills to educated youths for enhancing their employability. Youths are provided training in communication skills, computer skills and behavioural skills for three months.

At present, 1.45 lakh students are registered with the KYP training centres in all 534 blocks of Bihar. The KYP have trained 62,000 youths till now.

Nitish also chaired review meetings of the backward and extremely backward classes welfare department and that of the cooperative department in which decisions were taken.