Imran Khan says has 'learnt a lot' from Bihar CM Nitish Kumar

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has many admirers. Here is another and he has high praise for Kumar too.

Pakistan cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan, who hopes to become the prime minister whenever the next polls are held in his country, says he has ‘learnt a lot’ from Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar. Incidentally, the Bihar chief minister is also being considered a front-runner for the top political post in India after the 2014 general elections.

In an interview to an Indian English TV news channel, NDTV, Khan said he had been tracking Kumar’s political career and pursuing his political mantra.

“I was reading about Nitish Kumar in Bihar and the secret of success is that when you provide good governance, provide an enabling environment for investment and prosperity, then people are happy. Here we have the worst-ever governance in our history, a side effect of that, of course, is lawlessness and terrorism and everything,” Khan told the channel.

The former Pakistan cricket captain said his main platform when he took a plunge into politics was governance. His main object when he started his party — Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) — in 1997 was to fight corruption through good governance, Khan added.

“So, actually it goes back to Nitish Kumar because we have just unveiled our economic agenda. We had three months of deliberations. We consulted all the top economists we could find and we have come up with this economic agenda we just announced last week. Actually, it is very similar to what Nitish Kumar did in Bihar because when I read his book, exactly the same steps were taken which we intend to take,” he said.

Stating that corruption was a symptom of poor governance, Khan said Pakistan could not prosper until it fought graft.

Calling Kumar government ‘clean and transparent’, Khan said, “We are the only party in Pakistan where all our central executive members have declared their assets and we (have) put them on our website, and that’s what Nitish Kumar did.”

Incidentally, Nitish Kumar is to visit Pakistan at the invitation of a parliamentary delegation that visited Bihar last week.