Patna,(BiharTimes): Allotment of land for any central government educational institution/project in Bihar in the recent years has always taken a lot of time and are seldom free from controversy.

Be it the Central University of Bihar, Nalanda University, AMU branch, IIT, NIT etc all of them got land after much delay.

Now the Union budget presented in the Lok Sabha on July 10 had announced the opening of Indian Institute of Management in Bihar. Though the venue has not been announced sources said that the state government would like it to be centrally located.

In that way it can be established either in Patna, the state capital, or Gaya, the home district of present chief minister, Jitan Ram Manjhi, Nalanda, the home turf of the former chief minister, Nitish Kumar, or Vaishali, the district from where the present education minister, Brishen Patel, comes.

All these are centrally located districts and easily accessible. But Vaishali has one problem. The Mahatma Gandhi Setu is no more bridging the gap between Patna and Hajipur, the district headquarters of Vaishali, while the Digha-Sonepur bridge is likely to take some more years to come up. Yet, today or tomorrow, it would come up.

While Patna has IIT, NIT, AIIMS, Nalanda has got Nalanda University and Gaya and East Champaran have got the CUBs. On the other hand Kishanganj got a branch of Aligarh Muslim University.

So Vaishali––or even nearby Saran––can stake the claim for the IIM as once the bridge is completed it would not be too difficult to reach these two districts from road, rail and air routes (from Patna).

Ironically acquisition of land for projects in which the state government was interested appears to be much smoother affairs. There was no problem in getting land for Chandragupta Institute of Management Patna and even for the Chanakya National Law University in the vicinity of Patna.

In no time the state government decided to demolish a large number of official bungalows/flats to build a massive museum in Patna––not far away from the existing Patna Museum––costing around Rs 350 crore. Almost a similar amount is to be spent on the lavish bungalows to be built for over 300 legislators.
Similarly, land became an issue when the Centre wanted to open CUB in Gaya. The Centre ended this controversy by allotting the defence ministry land. But the state government found no such problem in getting land in East Champaran when the Union HRD ministry agreed for another CUB in the state there.

In contrast land was not such a big issue for a number of central government projects which came up during the previous regime in the state. For example within no time the land was allotted to the zonal office in Hajipur and East Central Railway started functioning within five years. Similarly it took no time for the NTPC to get land for its Barh project or even for that matter for ordnance factory in Rajgir (it could not come up for some other reason) or for a large number of railway projects all over the state.

The Patna AIIMS, which was actually inaugurated in 2004 during the fag end of the Vajpayee government also got the land much quickly.

No doubt land is an issue for Bihar, where both the NDA and UPA governments had initiated several big projects and institutions. But sometimes political factors do play its part. Land for Patna airport is another such example.

Citizens of Bihar can only hope that IIM does not become victim of that phenomenon.