New Delhi: The Bihar government handed over a memorandum to NITI Aayog on Friday raising “strong objection” to its ranking of the state in the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) report. NITI Aayog had released the report in the last week of November in which it ranked all the states as per different parameters. Bihar had ranked the poorest state in the report.
Bihar’s Energy, Planning, and Development Minister Bijendra Kumar Yadav said that the evaluation of the state by the NITI Aayog is “unacceptable”, as reported by IANS.
In the nine-page memo, he said that the report is based on data from 2015 which is “a completely unacceptable method that a premier institution opted for to evaluate Bihar.”
“The state has been gradually developing in every sector every year but the NITI Aayog has used old parameters to evaluate Bihar. The evaluation process of NITI Aayog was wrong. Hence, we have strong objections to it,” he added.
Yadav added that this is the second time the state has written to NITI Aayog. Earlier, when the report was published by the NITI Aayog, BJP leader Prem Ranjan Patel had called the report a “bundle of lies.”
The leaders from Bihar who are condemning the report argue that how could a backward state like Bihar be evaluated on the same standards as developed states like Punjab.
“Bihar is a backward state. It needs special status to achieve the national average of development. Bihar is completing all parameters, and a special status is required. Justice with Bihar would be done only after it gets special status," Yadav added.
As per the NITI Aayog report, 52 per cent of the population of Bihar is below the poverty line. And Bihar ranks lowest in per capita income, education, maternal health, cooking fuel, schooling, and school attendance. Bihar also has the highest number of malnourished children.