Patna, Aug. 29: Badh Chala Bihar, which started with much fanfare, has concluded without being noticed much.

It was an ambitious citizen participation initiative of the Nitish Kumar government.

The campaign, aimed at drafting the vision document for development of the state over the next 10 years, has come to an end as a low-key affair with not even half of the targeted results achieved.

Only four of nine of its components have been completed amid objections from Election Commission as well as Patna High Court. Sources attributed the reason behind its sudden and unnoticed end to shift of focus to political campaign for Nitish as well as the approaching model code of conduct.

The "Badh Chala Bihar-Bihar 2025" campaign was launched by Nitish in Patna on June 9. Claimed to be the world's largest inclusive governance programme, it was designed and executed by Citizen Alliance Pvt. Ltd, the firm floated by political strategist Prashant Kishor, under contract with state information and public relations department (IPRD).

Apart from Citizen Alliance, another team of Prashant, including data crunchers, copywriters and publicists, who together call themselves Indian People's Action Committee (IPAC), is dedicated to an exhaustive political campaign for Nitish ahead of the Assembly elections.

Sources claimed that more than half of the team of experts, including analysts and researchers in Citizen Alliance, have been sent back to their headquarters in Noida while several others have been shifted to IPAC's war rooms at 7 Circular Road (Nitish residence) and the one at the bungalow of Nitish's trusted Ram Chandra Prasad Singh. A skeleton team continues to work from the local office of Citizen Alliance at Exhibition Road for finalising the vision document.

"The activities Badh Chala Bihar officially concluded with 'Breakfast with the Chief Minister', an interaction between Nitish and a group of journalists, on August 17. Even Nitish had said during the meeting that the work related to data collection has been completed. Henceforth, there would be no more new activities under the campaign," said a source in Citizen Alliance.

IPRD minister Vijay Kumar Chaudhary too claimed that work on finalisation of vision document is going on at present. "Most activities under Badh Chala Bihar have been completed and the vision document is being prepared now," said Choudhary.

The sources claimed that the overall budget for Badh Chala Bihar was around Rs 100 crore. Janbhagidari formed the biggest component of the entire campaign, which envisaged taking feedback on the development aspirations from the rural population. Total 400 trucks christened Janbhagidari Manch equipped with gadgets and gizmos, including GPS, LED panels, microphones and music system among others were targeted to move across 40,000 villages to take feedback from people.

However, this initiative received repeated blows right from the initial stages. The Election Commission had on June 10 imposed a ban on this programme upon complaint from BJP alleging violation of model code of conduct for the Council elections. The ban was lifted following the lifting of poll code on July 10. Later, the high court prohibited audio-visual messages related to Nitish or his ministerial colleagues from being played on Janbhagidari Manch - the trucks used in this initiative.

"It was getting difficult to carry on the campaign amid so much objection and lack of focus. The prohibition imposed by the high court on involvement of state leadership in the campaign had also cast a shadow on Udghosh, which envisaged large public meetings between state leadership and special interest groups. Similar issues came up in other components of the campaign especially in the light of upcoming model code of conduct for the Assembly elections," said the source in Citizen Alliance.