NEW DELHI: Two MPs from Bihar raised demands for the state in particular and other demands in general in the Rajya Sabha on Friday.
JDU MP Sanjay K Jha urged the Centre to consider a proposal to rename the Darbhanga airport after a renowned poet of the Mithila region, namely Vidyapati.
He raised the issue in the Rajya Sabha during Zero Hour, informing the House that the Bihar government had written to the Ministry of Civil Aviation in 2020, requesting the renaming of Darbhanga airport.
He further said it had been proposed that Darbhanga airport should be renamed as 'Kavi Kokil Vidyapati Airport'.
On 22 December 2020, the Nitish Kumar government had written a letter to the then Civil Aviation Minister, requesting the airport be renamed after Vidyapati, as the Bihar Assembly and Legislative Council had already passed resolutions in this regard.
In Bihar’s Mithilanchal region, Vidyapati was a 15th-century poet, a scholar from north Bihar, and a polymath who wrote in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Apabhramsha, and Maithili. He is popularly known as 'Maithil Kavi Kokil' (the poet cuckoo of Maithili).
Similarly, Manoj Jha, a Rajya Sabha MP from Bihar’s main opposition party, RJD, urged the Centre on Friday to take "urgent steps" to address rising income inequality.
He said that the growing disparity in earnings was not just a challenge for the economy but also a threat to social stability. Raising the issue during Zero Hour in the Rajya Sabha, the RJD MP further said the middle- and lower-income groups were witnessing a decline in their earnings, while the income of the rich was rising.
"Income inequality is affecting several aspects of our lives. The income of the millionaires and the billionaires is rising... We have no complaint with that, but there is a parallel, sharp decline in the incomes of the middle- and lower-income groups, especially the unorganised sector," Jha said.
He added, saying, “Post-Covid, this trend has become faster. The elite class' income has increased, but in comparison, the marginalised group, the working class, is witnessing a decline in their earnings.”
He asserted that income disparity affected the economy as well as social stability. "It also affects democracy. Because when capital becomes concentrated, it influences politics. And when capital starts dominating politics, it is our collective responsibility to get out of it," he said.