A day after putting up a massive show of strength here, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to press for special status for his state.
Emerging after meeting, Nitish expressed confidence that the UPA Government was open to his demand. “Either the government will take a forward movement in this respect, else we will take a decision after that...Elections are due in 2014. The time is right now. If they do something in this period they can get the benefit of it,” he said. Though he had hinted at supporting anyone who gives Bihar special status, the JD(U)leader said,”If any politics is involved in it, it is the politics of development. There is no politics of permutations and combinations. There is no politics of going here and there.”
Nitish also met Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia.
“The purpose of today’s meeting was to urge the Centre to reconsider the issue. I have told the PM and the FM about it. They have listened to me intently,” he said.
Meanwhile, the BJP tried to play down Nitish’s meeting with Manmohan and his purported “overtures” to the Congress.
“Nitish’s credentials are impeccable. His politics has been on an anti-congress plank and he was associated with the JP movement,” BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said. Congress spokesman Rashid Alvi said the UPA had helped Bihar more than the NDA in which Nitish himself was a Union Minister for some time.