Nitish Kumar woos NRIs to invest in Bihar

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Patna, Jan 17 (IANS) In a bid to attract Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) of Bihar origin, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar held talks through video conference with members of the Bihar-Jharkhand Association of North America (BJANA).

Nitish invited BJANA members on Saturday evening to visit Bihar and see for themselves what he said was the development undertaken in the state in the last 15 years. He also promised all possible help on land acquisition and other necessary infrastructure development required for setting up new industrial units in Bihar.

The Chief minister said Bihar had come a long way in infrastructure development in the last 15 years with road connectivity to every village and towns with major cities.

"We have achieved the target to reach from any remote place to Patna in six hours and are now working to reduce the time to just five hours. The conversion of two-laned roads into four-laned and four-laned to six-laned ones are underway at many places. Besides, so many new bridges and roads have either been completed or 80 to 90 per cent complete," said Nitish Kumar.

"We had targeted to give electricity to every household in villages under the 'Saat Nischay Part-1' and we achieved it in October 2018. Now, we are facilitating more than 20-hour power supply to them," he said.

"The Bihar government has also achieved 90 per cent target of supplying drinking water under the "Har Ghar Nal Ka Jal" programme as well as "Swachh Bharat Abhiyan" initiative and both these programmes will be completed under the 'Saat Nishchay Part- 2'," the Chief Minister said.

The Bihar government is also working on the tourism sector to attract domestic and foreign tourists.

"We have constructed many eco parks in Patna, Gaya, Nalanda, Rajgir, Bhagalpur etc. We inaugurated the 'Venu Van' at Rajgir a few days ago and nature safari, zoo and 'glass walkway' will come up in the next few weeks at Rajgir. Bagaha is another wildlife adventure spot in north Bihar adjoining the Nepal border," Nitish Kumar said.

"In a bid to protect environment, Microsoft founder Bill Gates had given financial support to us in 2019 which immensely helps us to work in this field," Kumar said.

Nitish also asked for suggestions from members of BJANA to improve the situation further in Bihar.

BJANA President Avinash Gupta said he hoped to become a part of the development of Bihar in the coming months. BJANA members Ajay Jha, Sanjay Rai, Ashok Ramsharan, Ajay Singh and Consul General of India in New York, Randhir Jaiswal, were present on the occasion.

--IANS

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