Referring to the state government's decision to declare 26 of the 38 districts in Bihar calamity hit, Paswan said it would not suffice.
Lok Janshakti Party president Ram Vilas Paswan today charged the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar with "failing" to provide relief to the people affected by a natural calamity and demanded that the state government declare the entire state "famine/drought hit."
"The state government has miserably failed to reach relief to the people facing unprecedented drought... It is a shame on humanity," the former Union minister told reporters.
Referring to the state government's decision to declare 26 of the 38 districts in Bihar calamity hit, Paswan said it would not suffice.
"The entire state must be declared famine/drought hit and relief measures must be intensified to mitigate the miseries of the people, particularly poor people," he said.
Paswan threatened that his party would launch an agitational programme and call for a state-wide bandh if the government failed to discharge its duties in tackling the drought.
Claiming that reports of starvation deaths have started pouring in from some areas, including Saharsa, the LJP leader said if any starvation death occurred in the state the state government would be held responsible.
Paswan said Congress politician Buta Singh still holds the constitutional post of chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and his statement blaming the Nitish Kumar government on allotment of works should not be overlooked.
Bihar's National Democratic Alliance government has ordered a high-level inquiry into the allotment of a Rs900 crore project to rebuild breached river embankments in Sitamarhi district to Hindustan Steelworks Construction Limited (HSCL).
State water resources minister Virendra Yadav had said the embankment construction work on the Bagmati river was given to HSCL in 2005, when Bihar was under president's rule and Singh was governor of the state.
"It is surprising that the work was awarded to the HSCL on nomination basis despite it having no prior experience of constructing embankments," Yadav said.
The matter came to the notice of the state government when a stretch of 200 metres of the Bagmati embankment was breached at Tilak Tajpur in Sitamarhi on August 1, affecting people of eight panchayats under Sunnisayedpur block.
Claiming that the work was given to the company without floating tenders, the minister said, "We don't want to take the blame for mistakes committed by others."
Yadav said the state government ordered the setting up of a high-level inquiry panel comprising technical experts to look into the detailed project report formulated by HSCL as well as the actual work done.
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