Bihar Chief Minister and JD(U) president Nitish Kumar said on Monday that talks on seat sharing among the NDA allies would be thrashed out within a month. Reiterating his stand that there was no difference with BJP on any issue Nitish, who faced the media first time after his meeting with BJP president Amit Shah on Thursday, said there was nothing very important that transpired between them which could be shared with the media.
He said Amit Shah came here in connection with the BJP programme and he met him on breakfast and dinner and discussed various issues. This was an informal meeting, he added. “Once there is proposal on seat sharing we will discuss it. Everything will be settled down in 3-4 weeks,” said Nitish without elaborating further .
Nitish also reiterated his demand for special category status for Bihar. He said the matter will be raised and pleaded before the 15th Finance Commission. He said it was a very logical demand as Bihar was a land-locked State and backward on all indexes including per capita income. He said there had been an impression following the report of the 14th Finance Commission that grant of special category status to any State was now a closed chapter.
“We will submit the Government’s memorandum to the Commission and another joint memorandum will be submitted by all parties. All the parties in Bihar are in support of this public demand and they had unanimously passed a resolution in the State legislature in 2006,” he said. When asked why his deputy and BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi was not speaking on this issue, Nitish turned towards Modi and said the media should ask him about it. Modi said he would answer it at different forum.
Nitish said his party JD(U) has been raising this demand from 2006 and even sought over one crore signatures which were submitted to the Centre but nothing happened and then PM Manmohan Singh did not grant him time to meet on this issue.