Do Pass Go, Bihar Ministers Told: More Foreign Trips Will Be Funded

Patna: Bihar's ministers should be massaging their foreign networks to land invitations as speakers at conferences - the state will now pay for these international visits.

Yesterday, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his cabinet cleared the new policy for ministers to present research papers or deliver lectures abroad.

The older rules provided government funding only if ministers travelled as part of a delegation or on study tours, which are often controversial because they see politicians traveling to exotic locations to observe processes that can seem quite irrelevant for their states.  

Bihar's Education minister Ashok Chaudhary, who has a PhD, is to present a paper later this month in Boston on Dalits and the Indian political system. Finance Minister Abdul Bari Siddiqui is also scheduled to go abroad for a lecture soon, government sources told NDTV.

The Bihar government has three Doctorates. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has a degree in electrical engineering. His deputy Tejaswi Yadav, son of ally Lalu Yadav, did not finish high school.