Patna, (Bihar Times): Under the deluge of criticism chief minister Nitish Kumar held a review meeting with the officials immediately after his return from New Delhi on Thursday night. He went to the national capital a day earlier to attend the meeting of the NDA chief ministers in view of the July 22 no-confidence motion against the Manmohan Singh government. The chief minister also called another high-level meeting on Friday.
While the chief minister left for Delhi only a day before a large part of Patna has been facing acute water-logging for the last over a fortnight. The people of the affected colonies have become so much restive that on Thursday they blocked the National Highway-30.
Doctors now fear of the spread of epidemics in the water-logged localities of the state capital. As the blame game on the urban development minister, Bhola Singh, has assured that legal action would be taken against the National Building Constrution Corporation, the firm which has been assigned by the Nitish government to build the drains of Patna. Earlier the state government cancelled the contract of Tantia Construction for not building the roads of Patna. The latter on the other hand dragged the state government in the court for obstructing the construction work.
With the state government neck deep in trouble over water-logging the Patna MP, Ram Kripal Yadav of Rashtriya Janata Dal, is leaving no opportunity to visit the affected localities of the state capital.
On the other hand the former chief minister Rabri Devi, in a hard-h itting statement, charged the state government with siphoning off crores of rupees sent by the Centre under the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission. About Rs 4,000 crore has been allotted under the Mission for the improvement of Patna and other places.
