A BJP worker in Bihar was on Monday punished for asking a top leader of the party a few questions about the execution of development schemes that the leader found too uncomfortable. The perturbed leader, Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi, ordered the party worker to be arrested.

The Nitish Kumar government’s eagerness to furnish the bills for thousands of crores of rupees spent in welfare projects over six years to the accountant-general has spread discontent among the state’

Buoyed by senior JD(U) leader and former vice-chairman of Bihar Legislative Council, Virendra Chaudhary, joining the RJD after criticising the ruling party, RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav on Saturday heightened his attacks on chief minister Nitish Kumar and described his government as a “regime of frauds and scams”.

Despite growing criticism and damaging comparisons made with the ills generally associated with the Opposition RJD, Bihar’s ruling JD(U) carries on its fascination with bar girls and their song-and-dance shows as a ploy to gather crowds.

The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), despite being a minor political force in Bihar so far, is currently busy mobilising its local units across the state in preparation for the Assembly polls while looking forward to an alliance with the Congress.

In an incident that sharpens the irony of food grains rotting in FCI godowns while millions of people starve, a poor, old woman in Bihar was assaulted for picking up a few grains of wheat scattered around the wheels of a goods train at a railway station on Thursday.

With the alleged Rs 11,412-crore “treasury scam” badly denting the Nitish Kumar government’s image in poll-bound Bihar, hundreds of officials from several government departments are currently engaged in preparing thick sheaves of DC bills to be submitted at the AG office so as to erase the taints sullying the government.

A JD(U) leader and husband of village mukhiya in Bihar, whose brutal assault on a youth in full public view mocked at chief minister Nitish Kumar’s robust claims of establishing the rule of law in the state, was on Tuesday arrested and sent to jail following Mr Kumar’s orders.

Even as Bihar’s ruling JD(U) is gearing up its district-level units in the state in preparation for the imminent Assembly polls, incidents of rowdy acts and violence at its workers’ meetings in presence of senior leaders over three consecutive days have brought acute embarrassments to the party.

With the CAG reports repeatedly highlighting massive financial mismanagement by the Nitish Kumar-led JD(U)-BJP government in Bihar and calls for a CBI probe gaining momentum, comparisons are being drawn between these virtual scams and the Rs 1,000-crore fodder scam in the mid-1990s.