Rs 8,538 crore spent on relief to people in state: Bihar CM Nitish Kumar

PATNA: Bihar CM Nitish Kumar on Wednesday said the state government has so far spent more than Rs 8,538 crore on providing necessary relief to its people since Covid-19 pandemic spread in the country.
Addressing the elected representatives of panchayati raj institutions (PRIs) and urban local bodies (ULBs), didis of Jeevika’s self-help groups and other stakeholders through videoconferencing and webcast from the CM residence, Nitish objected to the ‘pravasi’ (expatriate) term being used for the people of Bihar working in other states. “I do not consider such people as ‘pravasi.’ When the whole country is one and our citizenship is one, how can a person from Bihar working in other state be termed as a pravasi?” Nitish wondered and explained that a person can be termed as ‘pravasi’ only if s/he has gone outside the country for work.
Nitish also lashed out at other states for not taking proper care of workers from Bihar. “Bhai (brothers), you people had gone to other states to provide service to them. They must have taken your proper care in the hour of crisis. But they didn’t. It is not good,” he said.
The CM said people of Bihar were forced to return as the states where they had been working didn’t bother to take care of them. “Now, when you have returned home, I wish you should not go outside under any compulsion. If anyone wants to go outside for a job willingly, the entire country is one, there is no issue,” Nitish said.
He said the state government was taking all necessary steps to provide employment to all returned migrant workers, besides those who had been working here and did not prefer to go outside Bihar.
While giving the statistics of expenditure during the Covid-19 period so far, Nitish said Rs1,620 crore was provided as financial assistance of Rs1,000 per family to around 1.41 crore ration card holders and 21 lakh poor families without ration cards, Rs1,017 crore as three months’ social security pension to 85 lakh pension holders and a sum of Rs3,261 crore was disbursed by the education department among the beneficiaries of its different schemes.
Similarly, more than Rs200 crore was provided as financial assistance of Rs1,000 per migrant workers. Another sum of Rs417 crore was disbursed as cash input subsidy among 12.35 lakh farmers, he said.
Nitish also revealed that average Rs5,300 per person was spent on people at quarantine centres.
“An estimated 12.70 lakh people listened to the CM’s speech through TV and different social media platforms,” state information and public relations department secretary Anupam Kumar said.