‘From “Bimaru” tag to growth story’: Amit Shah’s 25-year report card for Chhattisgarh

RAIPUR: Union home minister Amit Shah on Sunday presented Chhattisgarh’s 25-year journey as a BJP-driven development turnaround, claiming that the state has moved from being seen as a backward, 'bimaru', Maoist-affected region to standing on the threshold of becoming a top-performing state and that its next growth surge will come as Bastar emerges from decades of insurgency disruption.

Shah’s “report card” leaned heavily on fiscal and growth indicators. He claimed that if one compares the state’s budget trajectory from 2000 to 2025, the annual budget size has seen a dramatic rise by 30% which he said is a significant jump in the state’s financial capacity.“An acronymic word was once used for some states ‘Bimaru rajya,’” Shah said, recalling that it referred to Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

He argued that the same states and their successor states including Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand have now positioned themselves “on the verge of becoming developed states.”“If you want to assess 25 years of CG, you have to assess it through numbers,” Shah said, insisting the scale of change is measurable.He also cited per-capita revenue growth and GSDP expansion as key markers, and argued that multiple “indicators” of economic strength converge, stating that Chhattisgarh’s prosperity has expanded both in scale and in per-person terms.

In agriculture, Shah claimed irrigation has doubled over 25 years. He said kharif production has tripled, and highlighted a sharper rise in rabi output, which he framed as more significant because it depends on irrigation rather than rainfall — claiming a six-fold increase.In health infrastructure, Shah said district hospitals have risen from seven to 30, while medical colleges have expanded from one to 16 in the state’s 25-year span.On nutrition and child development, he cited major expansion of Anganwadinganwadi buildings. He also claimed a reduction in malnutrition-linked “hotspots” and an improvement in mortality indicators, stressing that these improvements happened despite large areas earlier remaining inaccessible to routine service delivery because of Maoist disruption.Bastar as the next growth frontierShah projected Bastar as the next major development frontier as Maoist influence recedes.

He said the region’s resources could have made it one of the most developed districts, but the insurgency disrupted institutions and blocked welfare access. He claimed that with Maoism “coming to an end”, the growth curve would steepen, and said Bastar could become the country’s most developed tribal district within a decade.Education, roads and investmentShah also flagged education and connectivity as indicators of change. He claimed that education outcomes improved significantly, and pointed to the expansion of Eklavya residential schools — saying there were none earlier, and now there are 75.

He said hostels and other support systems for children have expanded, claiming a three-fold rise.On connectivity, he claimed national highways doubled and rural road expansion was unprecedented. Shah also cited a major jump in investment inflows, arguing that Chhattisgarh has moved into a higher-growth phase that would have seemed “unimaginable” earlier.He added that Chhattisgarh now ranks among the top states in the production of several minerals and industrial raw materials — listing coal, tin, iron ore, limestone and bauxite — and said that the state is moving ahead with a strong growth rate.Addressing the national conclave ‘Chhattisgarh @ 25: Shifting the Lens,' in Raipur, Shah said the themes of “security, prosperity and stability” define what he called state's new identity. He credited the “ideology-led governance” under the BJP for delivering a “qualitative transformation” in a relatively short time, and claimed that states once clubbed under the “Bimaru” label have climbed out of it largely because of sustained BJP rule.Shah underscored that Chhattisgarh, created on Nov 1, 2000, began its life amid “very unique circumstances” with distance from the old administrative centre of MP and a geography and culture that demanded a separate unit for focused governance. He said resources existed in the region even earlier, but development did not match the potential.He also drew a political arc of the state’s governance, saying Chhattisgarh saw an initial phase of Congress rule, followed by a long BJP phase under Raman Singh, which he credited for pushing development across sectors while also confronting Maoist violence.

He alleged that during the subsequent Congress govt, the state saw a period of “scams and corruption” and claimed the development trajectory and Maoist containment suffered for five years, before the BJP returned to power under chief minister Vishnu Deo Sai.Framing Chhattisgarh as central to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Viksit Bharat 2045” vision, Shah said the state’s 25-year track record suggests it can grow even faster in the coming years. “Chhattisgarh will be freed from red terror and made one of the top states,” he said, pitching the next phase as a combined story of security consolidation and accelerated development.