Bihar could get special status, Nitish in UPA fold soon?

As it totters and remains propped up by outside allies like the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party, the Congress-led UPA government may woo regional allies like JD(U)’s Nitish Kumar by giving it to the Bihar chief minister’s demand to grant the state special status.

“We have decided to change the criteria (for backwardness), and it will be done so in the coming months,” an unnamed senior government official was quoted as saying in a Times of India report.

The official argued that the original criteria of classifying hilly states as backward was dated and needed to be changed. The new criteria? Socio-economic parameters.

According to a CNN-IBN report , the criteria of backward states will be changed and the regions which could benefit from this include Bihar, some regions of Rajasthan, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.

In addition to the special status to some states, the Finance Commission could also give debt relief to states like West Bengal, Kerala and Punjab. Will this please Mamata Banerjee enough to come back into the UPA fold? Unlikely.

However, whether this step would tilt Nitish Kumar in favour of joining the UPA alliance remains in question. After his recent visit to Delhi where he met with the Prime Minister, Finance Minister and vowed to back any alliance that granted Bihar special status, the government’s move could make him more amenable to joining the UPA despite the presence of local opponents like the Rashtriya Janata Dal and others.

But despite previous promises, the Bihar Chief Minister may not choose to hitch his electoral fortunes to the UPA wagon due to the fact that the BJP has helped him consolidate his hold on the state (more on that here ). It also doesn’t help that the JD(U) is one of the key constituents of the NDA.

MPs from the JD(U) are keeping their cards close to their chest for now and awaiting the central government’s decision before deciding the next course of action.

“We have an alliance with BJP and there is no tension in between us and BJP, we don’t know about the future. Our fight is to get a special status for Bihar,” Shivanand Tiwari, a JD(U) MP, said today.

“The central government will take decisions in accordance with their agendas and policies. The government has come up with a new parameter to include Bihar in the list.  We are not aware of what exactly we are getting, we can only comment then. Congress doesn’t seem to have a very strong hold anymore now,” he said.