Chief minister Nitish Kumar at his janata darbar on Monday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, May 16: The chief minister’s weekly people’s court had a surprise — and unusual — visitor, all the way from Mumbai.

Prateek Parijat, a student at the IIT in the Maharashtra capital, had quietly parked himself on a chair next to the chief minister’s secretary, with a paper in hand.

As Nitish turned to talk with his secretary, Aatish Chandra, he noticed the lad and assumed he was a complainant, like the sundry others. But since the young man did not quite appear to be one of them, Nitish asked his secretary what the boy had come for.

Chandra cleared the confusion. “He is a student from IIT-Bombay,” he told Nitish, “and has come here to do a research on your darbar.”

When Prateek Parijat returns to Mumbai after a month, he would be making a PowerPoint presentation on Nitish’s janata darbar at IIT.

Asked what inspired him to take up this subject for research, Prateek said: “One day when I googled Nitish Kumar, I found so many articles on him and his janata darbar. I was amazed after reading some of them and the number of people who come to attend his darbar. It is amazing the way he listens to the complaints of so many people on a regular basis.”

He said: “I wondered how he managed to do so many things at the same time: run the government, implement new rules and hold the janata darbar to listen to the problems of the common people. After reading all this, I was forced to speak to the head of my department. I asked him whether it was possible to do a research on Nitish’s janata darbar. When he asked me why I chose such a subject, I said I wanted to do a research on his management skills. He gave me the green light.”

Asked how he obtained the permission to be at the darbar, Prateek said: “I got the e-mail id of Nitish’s secretary. In the first week of April, I mailed Chanchal Kumar and S. Siddharth (both secretaries) and expressed my desire to conduct a research on the chief minister’s janata darbar and his marketing skill. I got a positive response from both and then the matter was sent to state general administration department and they gave me the clearance to carry on with my research and now I am here.”

Prateek hails from Jamshedpur and the project is part of his summer project.

After observing the proceedings, he spoke to the officials and also had a talk to some of the complainants.

Asked about his experience of the first day, Prateek said: “I do not have words to explain my feelings. What I see is completely beyond my expectations. Witnessing the chief minister to talk to each and every complainant with a smile is a different experience. This attitude is not found in other politicians.”

He said such connect between politicians and the masses are absent. “In Maharashtra, it is not possible for a common person to meet the chief minister so easily. Over here, hundreds and thousands of people are meeting the chief minister one after the other and even Nitish is giving a lot of time to each one of them.”

Prateek said he was also impressed with the officials at the darbar. “The best part was that the ministers and the officials of the departments concerned are sitting here and the complainants are returning satisfied, often with a smiling face. It is truly amazing. This shows the management skills of Nitish and his administration,” he told The Telegraph.

“I just want to understand his management skills and how he manages to govern one of the biggest states in India and so smoothly. I want to implement his skill in our subject (engineering) to get success. The way he is running the administration in Bihar is unbelievable,” he said.

The Bombay IITian said his PowerPoint presentation would “certainly become a hit” when he returns to Mumbai after a month.