Chidambaram pays moral boosting visit to Cong office in Bihar

PATNA: With his schedule curtailed due to technical problem in helicopter, Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram today paid a brief visit to state Congress office here.

Chidambaram, whose scheduled programme got disturbed due to technical problem in the helicopter which forced him to travel by road from Rajgir to Patna with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, paid a brief visit to Sadakat Ashram, the state Congress headquarters.

Kumar, who was travelling with Chidambaram in the same car, left in another car after getting out at the entrance of Sadakat Ashram.

Chidambaram cancelled his scheduled interaction with state Congressmen and talked to partymen for just few minutes.

State Congress media in-charge Prem Chandra Mishra and party MLC Jyoti handed over a memorandum on behalf of PCC chief Ashok Chaudhary for spurring up development of Bihar.

The Congress memorandum thanked the centre for providing recent grant of Rs 12,000 crore to Bihar.

Highlighting that Bihar as a state has suffered historically due to its location, lack of industrialisation and bifurcation of state into mineral rich Jharkhand, the state Congress made some suggestions to Chidambaram for improving the environment and industrialisation in the state.

The suggestions included asking banks to set up district level camps in coordination with district industry association and attend to issues with a slightly liberal approach and attitude. It also sought considering grant of tax incentives and slightly simpler norms for bank lending.

Strengthening of cooperative banking structure and harnessing scope for enhancing fish production and productivity in the large number of natural water bodies in Bihar are the other highlights of the memo.

"Currently almost 30 per cent of state's fish requirements is being imported from Andhra Pradesh and other neighbouring states", it said and demanded farmer credit cards on the lines of KCC and interest subvention for fish farmers.