Industrialists consider Bihar as preferred destination: Nitish

Patna, Oct 21: Buoyed by the success of investors meet with leading industrialists in Mumbai, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today said investors consider the state as a preferred destination now.

The investors meet in Mumbai on Saturday yielded positive response from leading industrialists of the country, Kumar told reporters here. The meet was attended by Anil Aggarwal of Vedanta group, Deepak Parekh of HDFC, Chanda Kochhar of ICICI bank, U K Sinha, SEBI chief and Y C Deveshwar of ITC.

As the industrialists expressed concern on power and land, "I informed them about the progress made in the power sector and the target to generate 6000 MW by the end of 2017," Kumar said. Besides, the Bihar government had completed replacement of old electric wire in 29,000 km out of a target of 72,000 km, he said.

About lands, the government had told them that they could buy them from farmers and the state government would take the task of their development as it was done for private industrial area. The industrialists showed keenness in the field of energy, education, health, urban development, skill development and infrastructure sector, he said.

They also expressed interest in the field of IT, Tourism and Urban development, the Chief Minister said. Kumar said the industrialists backed Bihar's demand for special category status. "CII even gave a presentation on the need for according special category status to Bihar," he said.

Kumar said he had written a letter to the Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram on October 8 urging him to implement the recommendations of Raghuram Rajan committee in six weeks. "If they fail to do so within that time, we'll intensify our agitation in support of the demand," he said.

Kumar said he was not using terms like "ultimatum or deadline" to the Centre while giving six weeks time, but "I think this much time is sufficient to put the recommendations into practice."

PTI