Patna: If Bihar’s Land Revenue Minister Ram Surat Rai has his way, every city in the state will have localities named after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar with homes for the landless.
On Thursday, the last day of the monsoon session of the Bihar Legislative Assembly, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) minister said that the government would allot land for the landless and build affordable houses under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana.
“Each city in Bihar will have two such localities. The areas will be named Modi Nagar and Nitish Nagar. we will have these Nagar Soon in Banka,” he said, adding that a large section of Below Poverty Line (BPL) families are eligible under the scheme, but they have not got land.
Opposition parties were united in criticizing the announcement, marking it as an empty promise that would not be fulfilled.
The announcement was made after Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan met Nitish in Patna on Tuesday evening.
According to BJP sources, Pradhan had reached Patna to discuss with Nitish Kumar for a reshuffle in the Bihar cabinet, in which at least eight BJP ministers were to be removed. He said Rai’s name is on the list.
Rai has been in the news for many controversies. In November last year, the opposition turned against him after two trucks of liquor were seized from the Hajipur school run by the minister’s relatives. Bihar has been a dry state since 2016 when Nitish banned the consumption of alcohol.
The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) sought Rai’s skull, but the BJP, which had projected him as a fresh face to woo the Yadav community, stood behind him.
In June, Rai sparked controversy with a comment on the Gyanvapi Masjid controversy. He had said, “Muslims have fooled the gods, have captured all the temples and built mosques.”
BJP sources alleged that Rai was trying to cash in on Modi and Nitish Nagar’s announcement to save himself from being left out of the Bihar cabinet. Opposition parties also hit out at the minister, claiming that no one in the state took Rai seriously.
ThePrint tried to reach Rai via telephone, but repeated calls did not get revert. If he responds, this report will be updated.
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land politics
Bihar is an underperformer when it comes to the delivery of housing projects under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Gramin, which aims to provide housing for the rural poor. According to the data provided by Ministry of Rural Development In 2019, till then only 1.2 per cent of the identified landless beneficiaries in Bihar were provided land.
In the past, Nitish had made many announcements for the landless, but he backtracked after fierce opposition to the findings of the Bihar Land Reforms Commission headed by Devvrat Bandyopadhyay. In its report submitted in 2008, the commission suggested a number of changes in the land policy, which included doing away with the system of classifying land into six categories.
“Land is always a political issue. The fact is that Bihar like other states has given up on giving land to industrial investors. They have been asked to buy land. A Janata Dal (United) minister said,” There is no land left.”
Meanwhile, the opposition united to condemn Rai’s statement, with the RJD saying it has to be taken with a pinch of salt.
“You should look at the earlier promises made by Ram Surat Rai. None of them have been completed. This too will disappear,” former chief minister Rabri Devi told ThePrint
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) claimed that the Nitish government is sitting on the recommendations of the Bandyopadhyay Commission.
“Does anyone take the minister seriously? The commission had identified an additional 22 lakh acres of land in Bihar. We are agitating to allot this land to the landless. This will reduce migration. But the government has shelved the recommendations,” CPI(M) state secretary Lalan Choudhary told ThePrint.
He said that the Nitish government had said that it would buy land to distribute to the landless about five years ago, but not a single acre of land has been purchased for this.
Political commentator NK Choudhary also said that Rai’s remarks were only a “political stunt”. “The idea is good but it fails to address the main problem of landlessness. The naming of localities after living leaders is a reflection of the feudal mindset. It can be described as a political stunt,” said the former Patna University professor.
(Edited by Tony Rae)
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