In a radical initiative to curb rampant corruption in Bihar, chief minister Nitish Kumar has proposed and managed to persuade his Cabinet to put an end to the legislators’ local area development (LAD)

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, known to be a man who likes reading, manages to find time for books from his essential reading of numerous government files and daily newspapers.

Bihar’s ruling JD(U) has formed a jumbo 154-member state executive committee under its new state chief Bashisth Narayan Singh, a close confidant of chief minister Nitish Kumar, who has aimed at giving

Reeling under the crushing defeat it met in Bihar’s Assembly polls, the RJD hopes to revive itself in its lost home turf by the organisational skills of senior leader Ramchandra Purve, a 63-year-old former minister and staunch loyalist of party chief Lalu Prasad Yadav.

The “appropriate time” indicated a month ago by the JD(U) leadership in Bihar to take disciplinary action against the party’s rebel leaders seems to have arrived. To begin with, the Nitish Kumar-led government has asked one rebel JD(U) MP to vacate a palatial residence in Patna he has been occupying since he was a minister.

The Maoists have suddenly increased their activities across Bihar and Jharkhand since the beginning of this week mainly for recruitment of cadres and to collect levy from business houses operating in

Senior RJD legislator Abdul Bari Siddiqui, a loyalist of party chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, was on Friday named the Leader of the Opposition in the Bihar Assembly after Speaker Uday Narayan Chaudhary reco

A bloody battle between armed bands of Maoists and criminals for control over a riverside area in southern Bihar is feared to have led to the slaughter of at least 15 people, most of them Maoists. Four bodies have been recovered but the police suspects the number of dead could be over 15.

If the Assembly polls in Bihar, which returned the Nitish Kumar government to power by a landslide, seemed far more civilised and richer in democratic spirits than all past elections in the state, the biggest credits go to the Election Commission of India (EC), say both political observers and ordinary citizens.

Indicating that his survival instincts may still be intact, RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav on Sunday said he must not be considered to have grown old. No longer the flamboyant politician he used to be, Mr Yadav promised to keep working for Bihar’s poor and ensure that communal forces do not deepen their roots in the state.