Patna: If Bihar land revenue minister Ram Surat Rai has his way, every town in the state will have localities named after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, with homes for the landless.
On the last day of the monsoon session of the Bihar assembly Thursday, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) minister said that the government would allot land and build low-cost houses for the landless under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana.
“There will be two such localities in each and every town in Bihar. The localities will be named Modi Nagar and Nitish Nagar. We will be having these nagars in Banka soon,” he said, adding that a large section of the Below Poverty Line (BPL) households are eligible under the scheme but haven’t got land.
Opposition parties were united in criticising the announcement, characterising it as an empty promise that wouldn’t be fulfilled.
The announcement came close on the heels of Union minister Dharamendra Pradhan calling on Nitish in Patna Tuesday evening.
According to BJP sources, Pradhan had reached Patna to discuss with Nitish a reshuffle of the Bihar cabinet in which at least eight BJP ministers were to be dropped. Rai’s name figured on the list, they said.
Rai has been in the news over several controversies. In November last year, the opposition had gone all out against him after two trucks of liquor were seized from a Hajipur school run by relatives of the minister. Bihar has been a dry state since 2016 when Nitish banned the consumption of alcohol.
The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) sought Rai’s scalp, but the BJP, which had projected him as a new face to woo the Yadav community, stood behind him.
In June, Rai had started a row with a remark on the Gyanvapi mosque dispute. “Muslims have fooled the gods, annexed all the temples and built mosques,” he had said.
The BJP sources alleged that Rai was trying to cash in on the announcement of the Modi and Nitish Nagars to save himself from being ousted from the Bihar cabinet. The opposition parties, too, lashed out at the minister, claiming that no one took Rai seriously in the state.
ThePrint attempted to reach Rai for a comment via telephone, but repeated calls went unanswered. This report will be updated if he responds.
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Politics of land
Bihar is an underperformer when it comes to the delivery of the housing projects under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Gramin, which aims to provide housing for the rural poor. According to data provided by the rural development ministry in 2019, only 1.2 per cent of identified landless beneficiaries had been provided land in Bihar by then.
In the past, Nitish had made several announcements for the landless, but he backtracked when there was a strong protest over the findings of the Bihar Land Reforms Commission headed by Debrabrata Bandyopadhyay. In its report submitted in 2008, the commission suggested a series of changes in the land policy, including abolishing the system of classifying land into six categories.
“Land is always a political issue. The fact is, Bihar has washed its hands from giving land like other states to even industrial investors. They are asked to buy land. There is no land to spare,” said a minister from the Janata Dal (United).
The opposition, meanwhile, was united in denouncing Rai’s statement, with the RJD saying that it had to be taken with a pinch of salt.
“You should look at the earlier promises made by Ram Surat Rai. None of them has been fulfilled. This one will also fade away,” former chief minister Rabri Devi to ThePrint
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) claimed that the Nitish government was sitting on the recommendations made by the Bandyopadhyay Commission.
“Does anyone take the minister seriously? The commission had identified 22 lakh acres of surplus land in Bihar. We have been agitating for the allotment of this land to the landless. It will decrease migration. But the government has kept the recommendations in cold storage,” CPI(M) state secretary Lalan Choudhary told ThePrint.
The Nitish government had said that it would purchase land to distribute to the landless about five years ago, but not a single acre of land has been bought for the purpose, he said.
Political commentator N.K. Choudhary also asserted that Rai’s remark was a mere “political stunt”. “The idea is good but it fails to address the main problem of landlessness. Naming localities after living leaders is a reflection of the feudal mindset. At best, it can be described as a political stunt,” the former Patna University professor said.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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