Six months after settling back in power armed with a massive mandate, the Nitish Kumar-led NDA government in Bihar is now finding itself increasingly under political attacks due to the inappropriate behaviour of some of its ministers and MLAs and taking cautious steps at corrections.
Despite chief minister Nitish Kumar uninhibitedly expressing support for a second BJP minister accused of having been declared a proclaimed absconder by a court 15 years ago and withholding this fact in official documents, the Opposition parties are rooting for his scalp.
Less than a week after cooperatives minister Ramadhar Singh of the BJP surrendered in court in May after his resignation in the wake of revelations that he had been a proclaimed absconder, urban development minister Prem Kumar found himself entangled in similar charges.
Unfortunately for Mr Kumar, whose political reputation as a person of credible secular credentials was crucial in getting the JD(U)-BJP alliance back to power for a second term, both the embattled ministers are from the BJP and they were declared absconder in criminal cases concerning communal politics. While Mr Singh was booked for delivering a patently anti-Muslim speech on December 17, 1992, in the communally sensitive days after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, Mr Prem Kumar was declared an absconder in March 23, 1996 in a 1991 case of rioting and assault.