Nitish Kumar addressess the media at Patna airport. Picture by Neshat Ahmad

Bettiah, Nov. 12: Nitish Kumar has pitted himself against Nitish Kumar.

With the Opposition in Bihar keeping a low profile, the chief minister used his Seva Yatra in West Champaran, the first leg of which ended today, to expose the lacunae in the governance at the grassroots level and express dissatisfaction at his administrative machinery.

Barwa, the site of the Tirhut canal renovation project, was the first venue of the yatra that began on November 9. The first sentence that Nitish uttered on reaching the project site was: “Afzal saheb (addressing the principal secretary, water resources, Afzal Amanullah), I do not find work is going on here. The surface is uneven. It appears that it has not even been levelled after extraction of earth.”

The chief minister, who is a qualified engineer, was anguished at the pace of work on the important canal that, when completed, promises irrigation to thousands of acres of land in East Champaran, Muzaffarpur and Vaishali districts. “Please monitor the work on a weekly basis… ensure it is done fast,” Nitish told Amanullah. The faces of several engineers and officials suddenly turned pale as the chief minister began “exposing” and questioning their work in full view of the people.

The one place he allowed his government a pat on the back was at Lauria, a once-crime belt, where he showcased HPCL’s newly built Rs 360-crore sugar factory as the model of industrialisation he has pledged.

At his next stop, Yogapatti — a block once described as the “university of crime” in a British gazette — the chief minister sought to find out the “truth” behind the implementation of the Right to Service Act. Nitish detected “laxity” in land mutation work and admonished the district officials. “You must understand that my Seva Yatra’s first priority is to ensure the delivery of goods to the people at the grassroots level. Any laxity on this score is not acceptable,” the chief minister said, while taking a potshot at the exteriors of the office which had been done up hurriedly ahead of his arrival. “The situation is the same inside the office,” Nitish remarked as he started examining the files. The officials appeared dazed and nervous.

On his return to Patna this afternoon, Nitish candidly accepted that more needs to be done. “The main purpose of my yatra was to find out if our work is reaching out to the beneficiaries at the grassroots level. We still have to work a lot and do a lot. It was an educative trip,” he said.

Yesterday, Nitish had sanctioned the prosecution of a dozen officials facing various corruption charges. Nitish, however, said today that the volume of complaints of bribery was relatively less. “But it is just a beginning. We have to cover the distance,” he added.

By questioning his government’s performance, the chief minister has made a shrewd attempt to occupy the space of the Opposition, which has kept a low profile since the electoral defeat last year. An official remarked that it was in fact the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) which ought to have taken up the task to find loopholes in governance.

Soon after Nitish had announced his Seva Yatra two months ago, RJD chief Lalu Prasad had declared he would embark on a “gaon gaon, paon paon (village after village on foot)” campaign to “expose” the government’s functioning. But the mercurial RJD leader has since then not come out with any programme for his yatra.

“The people will be more happy the more he (Nitish) questions us,” remarked a police inspector at Bettiah.