Credit to Jitan Ram Manjhi

Former Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi has credited Jitan Ram Manjhi, the chief minister for nine months in 2014-15, for the state's 17.5 per cent growth rate in the last financial year. Predictably, there was only a passing mention of current Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who preceded and succeeded Manjhi to the post. Modi said that while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) maintained that Bihar's growth story suffered since the collapse of its alliance with the Janata Dal-United (JD-U), there had, indeed, been a small improvement in the last fiscal, the credit for which should go to Manjhi and not Kumar. Modi cited a NITI Aayog report to bolster the BJP's stand that development activities had come to a grinding halt in the state after the alliance between the BJP and the JD-U ended in June 2013.