A six-member delegation from the state led by Chief Secretary G S Kang has returned with a number of investment promises from the diaspora after attending the Asia conference at Stanford University.

The international university was so impressed with the paper — ‘Challenges and Opportunities in Bihar’ — presented at the conference by the delegation that it has decided to hold a ‘mirror conference’ in Patna in March 2007.

This conference of international repute organised in India at different points of time by the university will be held for the first time in the state. Chief Secretary Kang termed it as a great achievement for the state and said the conference would further boost the state’s changing image. The university was also considering publishing the paper presented by Bihar, Kang said.

Two leading lights in the IT sector there — Mihir Choudhary and Ravi Verma — have promised to set up software development offices in Patna within a month. Similarly, another NRI, Jay Dhar Gupta — president of STAT Nurses International — has promised to open a nurses training institute in Bihar to meet the acute shortage of nurses in the US. The Chief Secretary said to begin with the institute would train 500 nurses from Bihar for migration and the numbers would be increased in the future.