Sushil Kumar Modi inaugurated the 21st Rajgir festival at Qila Maidan

Deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi inaugurated the 21st Rajgir festival at Qila Maidan on Friday. The newly built international convention centre's inauguration was postponed as chief minister Nitish Kumar could not reach Rajgir from Delhi due to inclement weather.

Minister of art, culture and youth affairs, Sukhda Pandey, mines and geology minister Satyadeo Narayan Arya, vice-chancellor of Nalanda University Gopa Sabarwal, principal secretary, tourism, Deepak Kumar, MP from Nalanda, Kaushlendra Kumar and all the MLAs and MLCs of the district were also present.

The absence of chief minister on the occasion dampened the spirit of the revellers. The visitors were also disappointed as Sufi singer Zila Khan also failed to reach the venue. He was to perform on the opening day of the festival. People were looking for tourism minister Sunil Kumar Pintu who also could not reach here, despite the fact that his department is the chief sponsor of the festival along with district administration, Nalanda.

The Rajgir festival, which was earlier known as Rajgir Nritya (dance) Mahotsav, was started in 1986. The then chief minister, late Bindeshwari Dubey, had inaugurated the festival in Swarna Bhandar area on April 4. 1986 in the presence of the then Union tourism minister, late HKL Bhagat, the then state tourism minister Uma Pandey and the then state deputy minister of education, Surendra Kumar Tarun.

The tourism department-sponsored festival continued till 1989. It was not held for the subsequent four years before getting revived in 1994. Since then, it is an annual event on the calendar of Bihar Tourism. With a change of venue and the added colour and development of new tourist spots in the last few years, the festival has become a favourite event for domestic as well as foreign tourists.

Following chief minister Nitish Kumar's initiative and timely execution of programmes by DM Sanjay Kumar Agrawal for the development of tourists spots, including Ghora Katora dam, Pandu Pokhar etc, and the renovation of various pilgrim centres in and around Rajgir, the festival is now organized at a more accessible Qila Maidan in the backdrop of Ratnagiri hills. Various sporting activities like tonga race, martial arts competitions, mehndi contest, mahila utsav, food plaza, gramshree mela etc have been introduced besides organizing performance by artists of national and international repute.

The efforts of the tourism department and the district administration to add something new every year have also paid off. This year, they have included horse race and a book fair for the tourists.

Noted artists like Hema Malini. Sonal Man Singh, Birju Maharaj, Bhupen Hazarika, Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, Ghulam Ali, Talat Aziz, Ravindra Jain, Hari Haran, Shovana Narayan, Jaspinder Narula, Alka Yagnik, Meenakshi Seshadri, Roop Kumar Rathod and Sonali Rathore have already performed during Rajgir Mahotsav.

Bihar expects over 1 million foreign tourists this year

Bihar is set for a record arrival of over one million foreign tourists in 2012, Sunil Kumar Pintu, Minister for Tourism, Government of Bihar, said. “I am fully confident that the number of foreign tourists in Bihar would cross one million in 2012,” Pintu was quoted.

He said that more than 800,000 foreign tourists visited the state till October 2012. As per the Central government’s data, about 9.72 lakh foreigners visited the state’s tourist attractions, including Bodh Gaya, Rajgir and Nalanda, Pintu said.

Girl gang-raped in Patna

A teenaged girl, vacationing at her maternal grandmother's village, was gang-raped allegedly by three men in  Patna district, police said on Thursday.

The incident took place in Chhoti Kewai village two days ago with the alleged perpetrators identified as Guddu Yadav,Annu Yadav and Arjun Yadav, they said.

A case has been registered against the three on the complaint of the victim, they said.

The victim was medically examined at a hospital in the state capital and the report is awaited, police said.

Bihar does not meet special state status criteria said Montek Singh Ahluwalia

Bihar does not meet the existing criteria to be granted the status of special category state, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said on Wednesday.

"Bihar does not meet the existing criteria according to which a state is deemed eligible for special category state. We do recognise that Bihar and some parts do have a special problem and as part of BGRF (Backward Regions Grant Fund) we have Bihar package," Ahluwalia told reporters.

He was briefing the media on the eve of National Development Council meeting to be chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar last week said he would raise the demand for special status state for Bihar at the National Development Council meeting.

Special category status brings private investment in a state as investors get tax benefits.

Kumar had also met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and handed over a six-page letter on the demand to provide special category state status to Bihar to spur growth.

Bihar demands the special category state status saying it is subject to floods. Likewise, Rajasthan demands the same saying it is subject to draught.

Ahluwalia said the Planning Commission cannot see to such demands by states in isolation.

"Either we have to reopen the whole question or respond (to) the demand of one state. Many states have problem," he said.

Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkin, Tripura and Uttarakhand are amongst the states that have been granted special category status.

Angry mob blinds 2 criminals in Bihar

Days after villagers in Bihar’s Araria district foiled a notorious criminal’s political ambitions by voting against his wife in a panchayat bypoll, they displayed savagery in blinding the criminal and his cousin by pouring acid in their eyes.

The blinding of Munna Thakur and Kanhaiya Thakur, struggling at a hospital, has revived painful memories of the Bhagalpur blinding case and the rule of law in Bihar’s villages.

Three of the 17 people named in the FIR were arrested and police were looking for the rest and the other 10 unnamed villagers who committed the ghastly act at Hingna village in Paramanandpur panchayat under Raniganj police station.

Araria’s acting SP Manoj Kumar said a probe was on after an FIR was lodged under Section 307 of the IPC and raids were being conducted to arrest the culprits. Acid from batteries of solar lamps was used to blind the two men, who police said were terrorising villagers after Munna’s wife Indu Kumari lost in the bypoll.

Thakur, a criminal known in the area for cases of bank dacoity and road robbery, had blamed the villagers for the defeat.
While criminals and men facing criminal cases often make their wives contest polls and ensure their victory through the fear factor, villagers of Paramanandpur were pra-ised after the December 20 panchayat bypoll for setting a notable exception.

A tale of two Patnas: One in Bihar, another in Scotland

It is a tale of two cities sharing the same name but separated by thousands of miles from one another. Patna, the state capital of Bihar, has a namesake in the faraway Scotland which owes its name to the eastern Indian city.

A young minister in the Nitish Kumar government is now trying to establish the links between the two places through cultural exchanges in view of their historic links.

Rural Development Minister Nitish Mishra, who has just returned from a ten-day trip to Great Britain, said that he was trying to forge cultural ties between the two Patnas located in different parts of the world.

Mishra, who had gone to Britain on an invitation of the British High Commission earlier this month, said that very few people in India were aware of the fact that a place called Patna existed even in Scotland.

"I came to know that a village called Patna was founded in East Ayrshire in Scotland way back in 1802 by William Fullarton whose father was an employee of the East India Company," he said.

Mishra stated that Fullarton was born in Patna and he decided to name a village in his native Scotland after his birthplace in 1802. "I subsequently came to know that there was a lot of curiosity among the people of Scottish Patna about the Indian Patna because of their common name," he said. "That is why I decided to explore the possibility of connecting the two Patnas through tourism and cultural exchanges."

Mishra, who is the son of three-term Bihar Chief Minister Dr Jaganath Mishra, said that he got a chance to do something in this regard during his recent visit to Scotland. "I discussed the idea of having cultural exchanges between the two Patnas with the Scottish Minister for External Affairs and International Development Hamza Yousaf among other things," he said. "We discussed the possibility of bringing delegations of people from one place to another.  I found the response quite encouraging from his side in this regard."

The Bihar minister, who has been a Chevening scholar, said that he also mooted this idea with the Indian tourism officials in London. He said that he could not visit the Scottish Patna because of his hectic schedule but he had been told that many of its residents were keen on visiting Patna in Bihar.

The British-educated Mishra, who had studied global political economy at the University of Hull in England prior to joining politics in Bihar, said that cultural exchanges would enable the people from the two Patnas to get to know each other and explore the two places."

Unlike the Bihar capital which has a population of more than 20 lakh people at present, the Scottish Patna is said to be a quiet place, about 650 km north of London, with a population of only 3,500. Located between the Carrick and Kyle districts in the East Ayrshire, it is famous for its river Doon which flows through the village.

In 2008, Mishra had been voted as the Pepsi-MTV Youth Icon of the Year for his "exemplary" work during the Kosi flood relief and rescue operations in Bihar. He was the Disaster Management minister then.

Kalam asks Nitish to establish mobile science Labs in Bihar villages

Dwelling on importance of developing scientific outlook among youngsters, former President APJ Abdul Kalam on Monday suggested to the Bihar government to set up mobile science laboratories in villages and science laboratory in every district.

"The value of science has to be propagated to people at large and they should be made to realize the role played by science in their day to day life. Youngsters should be motivated to enquire into science," he said in his inaugural speech at Mega Science Fair here.

Kalam emphasised on establishing science museums and laboratories across the country to remove fear against science from the minds of the children.

Kalam, popularly known as 'Missile Man', referred to his special relationship with Bihar and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who was the chief guest.

"I am very close to Bihar, particularly I have worked with Nitish Kumarji when he was minister of railways and later as Chief Minister of Bihar for the last seven years. He is working for development and bringing peace and prosperity for all the citizens of Bihar," he said.

He said the presence of chief minister was indeed an important message to all the people of rural villages of Bihar that education, particularly science education would reach the unreached.

Non-governmental bodies 'Agastya International Foundation' and 'Viksit Bharat Foundation' have successfully operated a mobile science Lab during April-July 2010.

Nitish Kumar in his address said science helped fight superstition. He appealed to children to give topmost priority to science in their studies.