Nitish to Centre: Make policies,leave implementation to states

New Delhi, Feb 18 (PTI) Bihar Chief Minister NitishKumar today told the Union government to stopcentrally-sponsored schemes and confine itself to making broadpolicies for development, leaving their implementation to thestates as they have "unique" needs.

He suggested that the Centre should constitute astrategic committee for states, decide a roadmap for fiveyears and then monitor the state''s performance on the settargets.

"You (Centre) develop policy and broad roadmap. Leavethe decision on schemes for states," Kumar said addressing theUnion government while speaking at a roundtable on foodsecurity here.

Asking the Union government to "stopCentrally-sponsored schemes, he said, "every state has itsunique needs. You give us task...you decide a target and helpand monitor us. But why go into minute details?"

Speaking on the topic ''Combating Food Inflation'', Kumarsaid there was a need to change the mindset while framingdevelopment policies.

Referring to the proposal of inter-linking of rivers inBihar, the Chief Minister rued that the Centre was still tofinalise the Detailed Action Plan even after lapse of threeyears since his government submitted a proposal.

He said inter-linking or rivers could have helped thestate tackle the problem of floods.

Kumar also termed as a "joke" the Centre''s allocationof Rs 400 crore for the Eastern India Green Revolution projectand said the government "needs to be cautious as the number ofBPL families would increase with the rise in food prices".

Talking about BPL families, he said the Centreestimated them to be 65 lakh in number while the state''sfigures showed the number to be 1.4 crore.

He said the government of India needs to make a properpolicy about safeguarding the interests of farmers whileallowing entry of private sector into hybrid seed industry.

Listing out achievements of his government inagriculture development and law order improvement, Kumarurged the private investors to come to the state and help inits turn around.

He said the state government needs their support inpolicy, expertise, fund to take its development agendaforward.