Chief minister Nitish Kumar makes a point at the news meet in Patna on Monday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, Sept. 12: Chief minister Nitish Kumar perceives that inter-ministerial group set up by the Manmohan Singh government to study the feasibility of Bihar’s demand for the special category status as the first effective move to accord the same to the state.

“I am happy at the setting up of the panel under the Planning Commission. It is a very positive move. Bihar fits on all the yardsticks of getting a special category status,” Nitish told reporters on the sidelines of his weekly janata darbar today.

What, apparently, has turned the chief minister more optimistic on the issue is the fact that the Centre has constituted the inter-ministerial panel under the supervision of the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission’s member-secretary Sudha Pillai would preside over the panel that would give its report by December.

Nitish revealed that secretary (expenditure), ministry of finance, Sumit Bose had been made the member-secretary of the inter-ministerial group which would study the memorandum given by the Bihar government besides the MPs from the state and others for the special category status.

The Prime Minister had assured a ruling JD(U) delegation, which had approached him with about 1.3 crore signatures of the people in support of the special category status in July, of discussing the issue at the National Development Council (NDC).

Nitish recognises the setting up of the inter-ministerial panel as the “first tangible step” to accord the special category status to Bihar.

“The issue is no longer limited to the confines of the NDC. Now, the Planning Commission will study the feasibility of the demand and consider it,” Nitish said.

Nitish said Bihar was a backward state on all the determinants of the development.

“The state’s per capita income is one-seventh of that of Delhi. The special category status will help the achieving parity with the developed states. Besides, the state will get tax holidays, inspiring the investors from public as well as private sectors to come to Bihar. The state should get the status to remove the regional imbalance,” the chief minister said.

The chief minister was critical to the proposed communal violence bill 2011, though.

Asked about his Gujarat counterpart Narendra Modi getting a “breather” from the Supreme Court, Nitish parried the question saying: “It is an issue involving the apex court on which I can not speak.”

The chief minister, however, has no objection with the BJP leader, L.K. Advani, undertaking a rath yatra on the issue of corruption.

“Bihar has already been carrying out campaign against corruption. It is for the first time in the country that the government had opened school on the property confiscated from a public servant (IAS officer S.S. Verma). The assets of all the public servants in the state have been put on the website for the scrutiny of the people as well as investigating agencies,” he said.