The state government has news to cheer up urban residents. It has given consent for one-time settlement of pending holding tax without imposition of any fine.

Chief minister Nitish Kumar announced this during a programme in which he addressed a conference of representatives of urban local bodies.

In Bihar, there are three categories of urban local bodies - municipal corporations for big towns, numbering 11 in the state, nagar parishad for small towns, numbering 42, and 87 nagar panchayats.

More than 1,000 representatives of the aforesaid urban local bodies took part in the conference.

Nitish also announced plans to reward better-performing personnel of urban local bodies.

Laying special emphasis on sanitation, Nitish announced that to promote sanitation drive in a big way and to improve the present system, it had been decided to give grants to each urban local body and Rs 1,200 per family per annum for sanitation work.

The project would put a burden of Rs 250 crore on the state exchequer and the fund would be given to the urban local bodies in two instalments.

The special aid aims to achieve several goals, including introduction of door-to-door collection of garbage, purchase of equipment for garbage handling, purchase of land for use as garbage dumping ground, regular cleaning of drains and also recycling of garbage among others.

The state government has also decided to enhance the approval limit of projects of the urban local bodies.

While municipal corporations can now sanction projects up to Rs 1 crore, the nagar parishads can sanction projects worth Rs 50 lakh and nagar panchayats up to Rs 30 lakh.

The government has also decided to provide iPads to all male representatives of urban local bodies. Earlier, this facility was limited to women representatives only.

While the conference of urban local bodies witnessed a series of announcements, earlier in the day, chief minister Nitish Kumar was in a different mood while taking part in a programme of the education department.

Nitish inaugurated 475 new buildings related to education on this occasion.

These buildings have been constructed by Bihar State Educational Infrastructure Construction Development Corporation.

Nitish had informed the gathering that 1,800 more such buildings were coming up and all of these were being constructed by the corporation.

Speaking on the occasion, Nitish said his government was committed to ensure qualitative improvement in the education sector.

He further said, his government was also expecting good conduct from its employees while doing their official duty.

"Government employees are getting handsome salaries now," said Nitish.

"More goods are in the offing for them as a new pay commission had been constituted and its recommendations would lead to better perks," the chief minister went on to add.

He urged the employees not to use dishonest means and even though the government was trying hard to bring in transparency by using technology, some of the employees were misusing even this system.

He urged the employees to shun all such habits.