Patna,(BiharTimes): Like in the past this time too Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar chose to spend the last few days of the year at Rajgir and toured a few places in its vicinity in Nalanda, his home district.

Along with him, shifted almost all the top bureaucrats of the state. The chief secretary and many senior officers, along with their families––as well as their files too––virtually camped in these cold winter days.

Nitish Kumar held meetings with officials, bankers and builders’ association, whom he asked to build disaster-proof buildings in the state. He discussed modalities of the proposed Draft Building Bylaws (DBB) with the builders at Udyami (entrepreneur) Panchayat there.

On December 28 he inaugurated Rajgir Mahotsava, which concluded on December 30.

Incidentally, the ever-, or over-critical, Bharatiya Janata Party is not questioning this annual chief ministerial extravaganza of virtually shifting the CM secretariat for a few days to Rajgir. The reason is very much there: till last winter 11 of its ministers too used to enjoy this fun.

Ironically, the media is not finding anything wrong in such regular Mohammad Bin Tughlaq type exercise of shifting the capital, In fact that medieval king did only once and returned to make Delhi the capital once again a few years later.

Some of them are hailing this move and calling it latest corporate style of mixing work with pleasure. Poor journalists do not know that running a country is not like running an industry or any such establishment.

A chief minsiter’s trip to Rajgir may be understandable, but how prudent it is to shift the whole top bureaucracy of the state. The builders, the bankers––not to speak of many others––had to travel all the way about 100 km from the state capital.

What is then the difference between our modern day democrats and the Maharajas and Nawabs of the past? Had this been done once it would have been justified. But this is happening quite frequently. During the Yatra days Nitish Kumar would move with almost his whole secretariat to various places of Bihar. Once he had even held a cabinet meeting in a village of Begusarai district. On another occasion at M V Ganga––on Jan 14, 2010, that is, Tilsakrat day.

Had any other chief minister done this the same media would have blasted him or her and might have come out with a series of stories as to how many crores have been spent on this whole exercise. What is shocking is that this is happening when efforts are being made to cut cost on the security of chief minister and other ministers after the coming to power of Aam Admi Party government in Delhi. Here in Bihar not only the chief minister is always on the move, but even his cabinet and secretariat––and hundreds of security personnel––follow him and nobody is there to question this wasteful expenditure.

A section of the media defended the choice of Rajgir on the plea that it is Buddhist pilgrimage centre. But why only Rajgir. After all it is in Bodh Gaya that Gautam Buddha got enlightenment. Why not camp at different places such as Vaishali, Vikramshila, or many other such places? In the process they may get extra attention.

Why only chief minister’s home district gets this preference?