Nitish Kumar defends annulment of Jitan Ram Manjhi cabinet's decisions

PATNA: Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today defended annulment of the erstwhile Jitan Ram Manjhi cabinet's decisions under miscellaneous heads prior to demitting office on February 20 and clarified it was done due to procedural lapse and not on the basis of the merit of those decisions.

"There is a laid down prodecure for bringing up a particular agenda for consideration of cabinet as per rules of executive business, but the same was not followed by the Manjhi cabinet in approving miscellaneous agendas in a hurried manner," he said, replying to debate on the Governor's address to the joint session of the state legislature.

A cabinet cannot take decisions on any agenda without substantive note prepared by the concerned departments, but the procedure was ignored by the erstwhile government leaving a question mark on propriety of such decisions, Kumar said.

Appearing visibly angry at Manjhi for approving 34 agendas at four cabinet meetings held between February 10 and 19 in a hurried manner without considering its financial implications or implementability, the Chief Minister questioned the motive of his predecessor in doing so, saying that if the former was serious about the same then he should have taken those decisions much earlier.

"Why had he (Manjhi) rushed through those miscellanous decisions (at the fag end of his term)? Who had stopped him (Manjhi) from taking decisions like one to give 13 months salaries to policemen in view of their difficult service conditions and implementing the same earlier?" Kumar asked and sought to chastise his predecessor for giving two hoots to rules and propriety in doing so.

Even the court has restrained him from taking policy decisions till February 21, but Manjhi sought to ignore judicial directive in taking slew of decisions under miscellanous heads, Kumar said.

He also derided his predecessor for deciding to set up an expert committee to find out socio-economic condition of the poor among the upper caste and recommend job reservation for them and said this measure, subsequently annulled by new government, was not necessary as a commission was already at work to address the issue.