Patna, Dec. 17: Deputy chief minister Tejaswi Yadav today came down heavily on the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) accusing it of meting out a step-motherly treatment to Bihar.

Tejaswi also demanded that the BCCI should allow IPL matches in Bihar.

"The BCCI is neglecting Bihar. I am amazed to see that till now the BCCI has not given affiliation to any cricket association in Bihar. But they have given affiliation to more than two cricket associations in states such as Gujarat and Maharashtra," said Tejaswi, who was also a cricketer and a member of Delhi Daredevils for the IPL for four years.

As things stands now, there are three cricket associations in Bihar and politicians head all. Abdul Bari Siddiqui, who is the finance minister of Bihar, is the president of Bihar Cricket Association (BCA). BJP MP Manoj Tiwari heads the Association of Bihar Cricket (ABC) and the third one is Cricket Association of Bihar (CAB) headed by Congress leader and former Union minister Subodh Kant Sahay. He is more active in Jharkhand than in Bihar as of now.

Tejaswi said once the BCCI gives affiliation to the state it would encourage more and more youngsters to take up cricket and in turn improve the sports infrastructure.

"Bihar is capable of holding international matches and we had already hosted a World Cup match in Patna. Because of BCCI's negligence, sports especially, cricket is suffering the most. The BCCI slots India-Pakistan matches in Maharashtra where people protest. Then why not slot it to Bihar? We would love to host such matches, in fact the present team having Virat Kohli, Ravindra Jadeja, Ishant Sharma were my batchmates and we used to play together. They would love to play in Bihar. Even IPL matches should be allowed in Bihar," said Tejaswi.

A World Cup match was held in Patna between Kenya and Zimbabwe on February 27, 1996, at Patna's Moin-ul-Haq Stadium .

Out of three associations, BCA is the only association which is recognised by the BCCI as associate member, which means Bihar is only allowed to hold cricket matches of under 16, 19 and 22. There are seven such states which are associate members recognised by the BCCI.

Scholarship cell

Tejaswi, who heads the Backward Classes and Extremely Backward Classes department, on Thursday directed officials to set up a cell for redressing the scholarship-related grievances. The directive came a day after Tejaswi, reacting to the complaint of a student, Krishna Kumar, got the problem solved.