Congress accuses NDA of ‘false promises’, neglecting Bhagalpur and Seemanchal

The Congress on Thursday, 6 November, launched a blistering attack on the ruling NDA in Bihar, accusing it of spinning “false promises” while allowing regions like Bhagalpur and Seemanchal to languish in poverty and neglect. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi prepared to address rallies in the state, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh took to X to remind him of “broken commitments and vanishing dreams,” asserting that the people would respond this time “with the power of their votes”.

“Pradhan Mantri ka jhooth sabse mazboot!” Ramesh quipped, as he accused the so-called “double-engine government” of abandoning one of Bihar’s most impoverished belts. “Why has Seemanchal been left to rot while the rest of the country moves ahead?” he asked.

The Congress leader cited a litany of unfulfilled promises — among them, the Vikramshila Central University in Bhagalpur, announced in 2015 with great fanfare and a price tag of Rs 500 crore. “10 years later, not a single brick has been laid. Has Vikramshila vanished like the Rs 1.25 lakh crore package the PM once promised?” he asked pointedly.

Ramesh also invoked Modi’s 2014 remark about Motihari Sugar Mill, where the Prime Minister had promised to one day sip tea made with sugar from the revived factory. “Eleven years later, the mill stands silent, and the people still wait for that cup of tea,” Ramesh wrote.

Turning to Darbhanga AIIMS, Ramesh noted that despite a Rs 1,264 crore announcement in 2020 and assurances that the facility would be operational by 2023, the site remains barren. “Will Darbhanga AIIMS ever exist beyond the Prime Minister’s manifesto?” he asked.

Drawing from reports by NITI Aayog and the Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI), Ramesh painted a grim picture of Seemanchal’s reality — where over half the population in districts like Araria and Purnia still battles multidimensional poverty. He pointed out that 73 per cent of households lack basic water access, 33 per cent defecate in the open, and 65% still cook over wood-fired stoves, exposing families to respiratory illness.

“In this land of deprivation,” he wrote, “there is no education, no healthcare, no employment — only poverty and migration. The Prime Minister’s development is invisible here, even from a distance.”

Ramesh said the Congress and its INDIA bloc partners — including the RJD and Left parties — were determined to give Bihar a new direction under Tejashwi Yadav, the alliance’s chief ministerial face.

As the state votes in two phases on 6 and 11 November, Ramesh expressed confidence that the people of Bhagalpur and Seemanchal would deliver a resounding verdict against “two decades of betrayal.”

“This time,” he declared, “Bihar’s neglected heartlands will speak — not with anger, but with their ballots.”

With PTI inputs