Bihar’s Nitish Kumar-led government on Saturday drew praise from a host of economists, policymakers and investors for the state’s rising GDP and sure-footed governance model, but the praise came with loads of caution.

Bihar’s speedy and far-reaching development will become smoother if the state was accorded a special category status by the Centre and its perennial flood crisis was resolved with Nepal’s cooperation, said chief minister Nitish Kumar on Friday.

Jharkhand looks headed for fierce acrimony between tribals and non-tribals over proposed amendments to a hundred-year-old law that restricts sale and purchase of tribal land in order to protect the primitive communities. Political parties are bitterly divided even as protests are spreading across the state.

In an accidental revelation about a forgotten figure of undivided Bihar’s `950-crore fodder scam, RJD chief and scam accused Lalu Prasad Yadav’s former private secretary Mukul Kapoor, who was missing since 16 years, is learnt to have purchased two flats in Patna this month.

RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav and Congress leader Jagannath Mishra, both former chief ministers of undivided Bihar facing trial in the biggest case in the Rs 950-crore fodder scam, appeared in a special CBI court in Jharkhand capital Ranchi for getting their statements recorded on Tuesday.

In sly remarks revealing his dissatisfaction about the way Central funds were being spent in Bihar, Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday asked chief minister Nitish Kumar to ensure strict monitoring of schemes like MNREGS and Indira Awas Yojna (IAY).

Ten people were on Tuesday sentenced to death and four others awarded life imprisonment by a lower court in Bihar for the Amausi massacre in 2009 in which 16 people from the politically forward Kurmi and Koeri castes were shot dead in cold blood.

In a shocking exposure by the police, five of 25 minor girls arrested in a red-light area close to the Indo-Nepal border in Bihar’s Araria district were on Monday identified as students of a government-run residential school, exclusively for dalit, tribal and backward caste girls.

Old habits die hard, but some old habits hardly die. An MLA of Bihar’s ruling JD(U) has shocked public and political sensibilities by repeating his indulgence in vulgarly dancing with bargirls two years after chief minister Nitish Kumar had reprimanded him for a similar act.

Disregarding massive humanitarian losses like some 50 lively villages already swallowed by the mighty Kosi river’s waters and the displacement of over 75,000 people, a mega road bridge across the rive