Bihar chief minister and JD(U) strongman Nitish Kumar’s deepening aloofness towards his Gujarat counterpart and BJP icon Narendra Modi drew open criticism from a senior BJP minister in Bihar’s JD(U)-BJP coalition government on Thursday.

BJP stalwart Narendra Modi’s swearing-in ceremony in Gandhinagar as Gujarat’s chief minister had uneasy echoes for the NDA in Patna on Wednesday as both Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar of the JD(U) and deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi of the BJP skipped the grand event.

Jharkhand’s ruling JMM legislator and party supremo Sibu Soren’s daughter-in-law Sita Soren is facing investigation by the police in state capital Ranchi for charges of abducting and attacking a former aide allegedly to stop him from deposing further before the CBI.

With Bihar’s leading Opposition leaders increasing their tours across the state to campaign against the Nitish Kumar-led NDA government, challenges are piling up before the main ruling party JD(U) in the aftermath of Narendra Modi’s rise in prominence.

A leader of Bihar’s ruling BJP has been accused of sexually harassing a woman after taking objectionable photographs of her and then trying to set her afire when she insisted on pursuing a case she had filed against him in a court.

Leading civil rights activists and Maoist sympathisers on Thursday condemned the Bihar government’s withdrawal of permission for a major rally in Muzaffarpur scheduled for Friday to protest against th

Harendra Shah, a minor farmer from Mahua in Bihar’s Vaishali district, is overjoyed to be at the world-famous Sonepur fair because he managed to buy a “small, capable-looking” horse here.

Bihar’s rebel JD(U) leader and Rajya Sabha member Upendra Kushwaha, who has been openly critical of chief minister Nitish Kumar, on Sunday announced his decision to resign from the Upper House and the JD(U) to form a new party to take on the state’s ruling NDA.

With the number of people who died allegedly after consuming spurious liquor in Bihar’s Bhojpur district touching 26 on Sunday, the Opposition parties stepped up their criticism of the NDA government’s liquor policy and encouragement of the liquor trade.

After being repeatedly snubbed by the Congress in Bihar, the RJD freshly hopes to have a pre-poll alliance with the national party for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls in order to form a grand alliance of secular parties including the left to defeat the “communal forces”.