Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has deputed his deputy, Tejashwi Yadav, to attend Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting on the conservation of the Ganga in Kolkata on December 30.
This will be the second meeting called by the Centre that Kumar will skip since he ended his alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and formed the government with Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Congress in August.
On December 17, Yadav and his ministerial colleague Vijay Kumar Chowdhary attended Union home minister Amit Shah’s Eastern Zonal Council meeting of chief ministers in Kolkata.
Kumar downplayed a perception that he was avoiding interaction with Modi after ending his alliance with the BJP. He said when Modi last chaired a meeting on the Namami Gange scheme for the conservation of the Ganga, Sushil Modi, who was his deputy then, attended it as he was in charge of the concerned department.
“This time Tejashwi Yadav is handling this department; so we requested him to go,” said Kumar on Wednesday after paying homage to late BJP leader Arun Jaitley on his birth anniversary. Kumar said they have been working on the Ganga conservation for a long time.
A Comptroller and Auditor General of India report tabled in Bihar assembly in March slammed the state government for not utilising a major portion of funds sanctioned for strengthening the sewerage infrastructure in Patna under Namami Gange. It said the project was running behind schedule.
“Around ₹684 crore meant to be used under the scheme in a span of four financial ears was left untouched by the Bihar State Ganga River Conservation and Programme Management Society…”
Kumar separately said he will start a yatra on January 5 and cover visit all districts to see the work being done and to meet people. He said a corruption case against RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav was reopened this month as they joined hands to form the government.
In 2018, the Central Bureau of Investigation started its probe into the allegations of corruption in the allotment of two projects when the RJD chief was the railway minister. It closed the inquiry in 2021 saying there were no strong grounds to register a First Information Report.
