Nitish Kumar

Patna, March 28: The Bihar Assembly today unanimously passed the Right to Service Bill, 2011, aimed at ensuring legitimate services to people by public servants within a stipulated timeframe.

Chief minister Nitish Kumar described the decision as yet another “path-breaking” measure to strengthen democracy and serve the masses.

“The legislation will go a long way in fixing accountability of the public servants. They (officials) will be liable to punitive action in the event of their failure to provide necessary service to the people whom the legislation has armed with a strong weapon to extract service from the public servants,” the chief minister said, supporting the bill.

In its journey to become an Act, the bill has to be passed by the state Legislative Council and then secure the consent of the governor. “Once the governor accords his consent, the Right to Service Act will be notified and rules will be framed to implement it,” Nitish said, dwelling at length how the bill would play a “historic” role in strengthening the democracy and stamping out corruption. .

Leader of Opposition Abdul Bari Siddiqui suspected that in the absence of rules, which were yet to be formulated, the bill might become useless. “You (government) must formulate the rules within three months to implement the Right to Service Act. Otherwise, the Act would turn out to be a mere gospel on papers.”

Replying to Siddiqui’s suspicion, the chief minister said, “You have given us three-month time which is more than enough. I assure the House that the government would formulate the rules within a month of the gubernatorial assent and will implement it latest by August 15 this year.”

Complaints from people regarding the delay in issuing caste/income/conduct certificates or demand of bribe for doing such work to Nitish during his Vishwas Yatra in the first term of the NDA government, made the chief minister conceptualise and bring about the legislation based on the pattern of Madhya Pradesh, which implemented the Right to Service Act in 2010.

In fact, Siddiqui pointed out that the Right to Service Bill was more an “emulation” of the Madhya Pradesh legislation rather than a “novel” measure by the Nitish Kumar government.

But Nitish countered him saying, “We are not angles. I keep my mind open to ideas and pick them if I find them suitable for the people of the state.”