Patna, April 22: On the final day of the Assembly's current session, the treasury and Opposition benches played the blame game against each other.
Road construction minister Rajiv Ranjan alias Lallan Singh blamed the Centre for the poor condition of national highways. He was responding to the issue raised by BJP MLA Sanjay Singh Tiger about frequent traffic jams on the Patna-Ara route. "There will be traffic jams where the roads are full of ditches," said the minister intervening in the matter.
Leader of Opposition Nand Kishore Yadav said the issue was related to traffic. "If you must intervene, talk about the ways you can ease traffic," said Nand Kishore.
However, the minister refused to relent. "When Nand Kishore was the minister of road construction, he spent over Rs 900 crore on repair of national highways. The Centre did not reimburse the amount and there were audit objections. If Nand Kishore gets a letter from the central government stating that it was not responsible for the national highways, the state government will get the roads repaired on its own cost," Lallan said.
During Question Hour, the treasury bench and Opposition clashed over implementation of the Food Security Act. Several BJP MLAs complained about irregularities in preparing the below poverty line (BPL) list. "Even income-tax payers have been included in the list while the more deserving have been left out," said BJP MLA Vijay Kumar Sinha.
Rural development minister Srawan Kumar said if the MLAs can give specific cases, he would ensure that they are omitted from the list within one month.
Nand Kishore alleged that there was a huge bungling in the BPL list. "The actual BPL population is being deprived of subsidised foodgrain, while the middlemen are taking the benefits," he said, stressing that the state government had not sent a proper list to the Centre of BPL beneficiaries and over 1 crore BPL families are still to be included.
Food and consumer affairs minister Shyam Rajak denied the charge emphasising that the Centre was not sending the full quota of food grains to the state. He urged the BJP leader to "lead" a delegation to Delhi and urge the Union ministers concerned to release adequate foodgrain to the state.
During zero hour, Prem Kumar raised the issue of rising crime in the state. He quoted an incident of Nitish Kumar's home district Nalanda where a girl was kidnapped and gang-raped. He demanded speedy action against the guilty. He declared that crimes like kidnapping, murder, dacoity and rape have become rampant in the state. The state government did not respond to Prem Kumar's charges though.
