Supaul: Bihar Chief Minister,
Nitish Kumar today accused the Centre of ditching the people
by not giving adequate fund for the people in the Kosi belt
devastated by floods after river Kosi breached its embankment
and charted its new course at Kusaha in Nepal in 2008.
"The Centre has ditched the people of Kosi belt
devastated by floods in 2008," Kumar said while addressing a
public meeting here on his third-leg of `Biswas Yatra` to
seek people`s opinions about the performance of his
government.
At the time of 2008 disaster, Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh had toured the Kosi belt and declared the devastation as
national disaster and had promised funds for rehabilitation
and relief works in the area, he ssid.
"But it is unfortunate that the Centre has so far
failed to provide assistance for undertaking rehabilitation...
it is a different matter that we received some kind of help
from it for carrying out relief at that time," he said.
Kumar said his government had formulated a comprehensive
rehabilitation package for the Kosi belt for the flood-hit
victims and would take all-possible steps for extending the
help even from its limited resources.
"We are happy that the World Bank has now now agreed to
provide us for carrying out the rehabilitation programme in
the area," he said.
Kumar also enumerated the steps taken by the state
government during the past over four years and said his
government had accorded priority to ensuring development with
justice.
Kumar said after undertaking survey of the magnitude of
the damage caused by the floods, the state government had
sought a rehabilitation package of Rs 14800 crore from the
Centre.
"But our repeated requests to the centre failed to yield
any response to this," he said.
Kumar reiterated his charge that the Centre had been
discriminating against the interests of Bihar for long.
"While it paid due attention to similar type of natural
tragedy that other states experienced, it ignored the
demand of Bihar," he said.
PTI
