72% voters in Bihar think Nitish Kumar is the best Chief Minister

In India Today's recently carried out national opinion poll "Mood of the Nation" , Bihar's Chief Minister Mr. Nitish Kumar, was ranked as the 3rd most popular Chief Minister. He was ranked at the 3rd place only after Narendra Modi and Shiela Dixit.

72% of the voters in Bihar thought Nitish was the best Chief Minister and 54% voters from Jharkhand thought the same.

This is a significant aspect as not people of Bihar and Jharkhand think that Nitish is a very good Chief Minister but the nation also thinks so.

This poll was conducted by India Today along with AC Nielson-ORG-MARG and the article was published on the 10th of April 2009 in India Today.

The last 3 years rankings of the Chief Minister's are as follows

Where they stood, where they stand
Chief Ministers	2009	2008	2007
Narendra Modi, Gujarat	1	1	1
Sheila Dikshit, Delhi	2	5	5
Nitish Kumar, Bihar	3	4	1
Mayawati, Uttar Pradesh	4	2
YSR Reddy, Andhra Pradesh	5	3
M. Karunanidhi, Tamil Nadu	6	6
Ashok Chavan, Maharashtra	7	New entry
Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, West Bengal	8	8
V.S.Achuthanandan, Kerala	9	16
Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Madhya Pradesh	10	17
Naveen Patnaik, Orissa	11	11
Ashok Gehlot, Rajasthan	12	New entry
Raman Singh, Chhattisgarh	13	10
Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Haryana	14	14
Parkash Singh Badal, Punjab	15	12
Tarun Kumar Gogoi, Assam	16	13
Digambar Kamat, Goa	17	New entry
Maj.Gen (Retd) B.C.Khanduri	18	18

The article had some good things to say about Nitish Kumar. To quote from the article "Until a couple of years ago, most Indians looked at Bihar in the way that the world now sees Pakistan— a failed state, where nothing ever works and anything can go wrong.

Governance was a sham, the law and order situation was in a shambles and the state Assembly did not even pass a budget for five years and instead opted for the vote on account.

And then Nitish Kumar came along. He laid particular emphasis on the health and education sectors, ensured that the allocations for roads were fully utilised to connect the state and cracked the whip on law offenders, not even hesitating to send his own partymen to jail for violations.

Kumar does not have a pan-Indian image like Modi but 72 per cent voters in Bihar and 54 per cent in Jharkhand thought he was the best chief minister, his support base cutting across the urban-rural divide and age groups. With 10 per cent of the national vote, just one percentage point behind Dikshit, he occupies third place."

I would like to thank Mr. Indra Verma for highlighting this article and pointing out that Bihar is perhaps the only state in India where the issue is development. People can follow this article at Leaders and Laggards by Ashok K. Damodaran from India Today.