HARD BARGAIN FOR CENTRAL GRANTS

N. Chandrababu Naidu and Nitish Kumar leverage the BJP's dependence on them to seek Special Category Status for their respective states. This is what it will entail

- Amarnath K. Menon, Amitabh Srivastava

Andhra Pradesh chief minister designate N. Chandrababu Naidu and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar are adept at driving hard bargains. With their strong showing in the Lok Sabha polls, they are now indispensable to the BJP in forming a National Democratic Alliance government. Both are likely to reopen their old demand that Delhi accord their respective states Special Category Status (SCS)—whereby the Union government makes special financial grants for quicker development of an economically/ geographically disadvantaged state—on priority. Naidu, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) supremo, has been demanding the SCS for long. Though it was promised by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA)-2 regime at the time of Parliament adopting the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014, Naidu’s demand was finally turned down in 2018, leading him to quit the NDA. This was after he had got PM Narendra Modi to lay the foundation stone for a new capital at Amravati—a project close to Naidu’s heart that he plans to finance with central funds and external borrowings. In Bihar’s case, on November 22, 2023, while Nitish Kumar was still leading the Mahagathbandhan government, his cabinet passed a resolution s