Sushil Modi said 14th Finance Commission has done away with concept of 'special status' (File)
Responding to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar threatening a state-wide movement if the Centre does not grant special category status to his state, BJP MP Sushil Modi said that no state will be given special status as the concept itself has been done away with.
"No matter how much you protest, no state will get special status. The concept itself has been done away with by the Raghuram Rajan committee and the 14th Finance Commission," Sushil Modi said while speaking to news agency ANI on Friday.
Sushil Modi said that when Chidambaram was Union Home Minister and then Finance Minister, a committee was constituted under the chairmanship of Raghuram Rajan on the same issue and the committee came to the conclusion that no state can be given the status of a special state.
"When P Chidambaram was Union Home Minister and later Finance Minister, he constituted a special committee under the chairmanship of Raghuram Rajan, to check if special status could be given to Bihar or not, but the report of that committee said no state can be given the status of a special state," he said.
The BJP Rajya Sabha leader further said that the 14th Finance Commission has done away with the concept of 'special status' for states completely.
"The 14th Finance Commission finished this thought completely. No state in the country can claim 'special status'," he said.
In an attack on the Bihar Chief Minister, Sushil Modi said, "Whenever elections come near, Nitish Kumar suddenly remembers about special status."
"The Narendra Modi government has given Bihar enough under a special package, even more than what it could have gotten if it had special status. The central government is spending 1 lakh crore rupees in Bihar to construct four-lane and six-lane roads," he explained.
Nitish Kumar announced on Thursday that he will launch a state-wide movement if the Centre does not grant special category status to the state "at the earliest."
The JD(U) leader, who has been demanding special status for many years, said the state needs this in order to move forward.
"If the Centre does not grant special status to Bihar at the earliest, we will launch a state-wide movement... The demand for a special status will be heard in every nook and corner of the state during the movement," he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)