Nitish meets PM, discusses Pak, Bihar's special status

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to brief him about his recent visit to Pakistan.

During his recent visit to Pakistan, the Bihar CM had lobbied for people-to-people contact between the two nations.

It is learnt that during his discussions with the prime minister, Kumar also raised the issue of providing special status to Bihar.

Recently, he had linked his party Janata Dal-United's demand for a special status with future political alignments.

He is also understood to have demanded coal linkage to the Barauni thermal power plant. JD-U members have been raising the issue in Parliament too.

Talking to reporters after the meeting, Kumar said while the government has won the vote on FDI in retail in Lok Sabha, "public opinion was that FDI is not welcome here. This has been proved by debates in Parliament on the issue," he said.

During the day, Kumar also met Food Minister K V Thomas and urged the Centre to give more time to sell last year's rice to FCI, with relaxation in quality norms.

He also requested the Centre to increase FCI staff, especially quality inspectors, in the state to speed up the procurement process.

FCI buys rice that has 25 per cent broken grain and small broken rice of up to 1 per cent.

Bihar has not been able to sell last year's rice to FCI as more than double increase in paddy procurement last year has put pressure on milling capacity and godowns in the state.