As the results of this year’s IIT-JEE results appeared on Wednesday morning, a nondescript area in the Bihar capital suddenly burst into celebratory noise emerging from a rather quiet coaching centre, reminding local residents of similar jubilation in the past two years. Super 30, the small coaching centre that trains students from very-low economic backgrounds for the IIT entrance tests free of cost, had done it again.

Despite withdrawing support to Jharkhand’s Shibu Soren government and asking its ministers to resign, the BJP appears still hopeful of reaching rapprochement with its wily ally JMM and reviving their coalition government so as to avoid imposition of President’s Rule.

Facing a tantalising opportunity to taste power in Jharkhand, the Congress on Tuesday started unhurried but determined efforts to get its ally JVM(P), led by former chief minister Babulal Marandi, to join it in supporting the Shibu Soren government.

Passengers of the New Delhi-Guwahati Rajdhani Express escaped with minor injuries on Tuesday morning when the train was derailed in eastern Bihar due to the removal of two metres of the tracks by suspected Maoists.

The frayed marriage of convenience between the JMM and the BJP in Jharkhand fell apart on Monday after a distraught BJP formally withdrew support to the Shibu Soren-led government, bringing an end to a protracted political stalemate and reducing the state’s five-month-old coalition government to a minority.

In Jharkhand’s fractured politics in the aftermath of the BJP’s withdrawal of support to the Shibu Soren-led coalition government on Monday, the state’s first chief minister and leader of the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik), Babulal Marandi, holds the keys to the formation of the next government.

Possibilities of the JMM breaking its ties with ally BJP and continuing to head the Jharkhand government with support from the UPA rose on Sunday as beleaguered chief minister and JMM supremo Shibu Soren indicated that he was unlikely to resign on May 25, the deadline agreed between the JMM and the BJP for a change of guard.

Speculation was rife in Jharkhand on Saturday about a Jharkhand Mukti Morcha-UPA government being formed after May 25, the deadline agreed between the JMM and the Bharatiya Janata Party for the resign

The Bihar government has been directed by the state human rights commission to pay Rs 40,000 to each of ten people who were wrongly sent to jail due to shoddy investigations by the police. The ten people were jailed after fabricated charges of murder and abduction were levelled against them in two separate cases.

A reporter of a Patna-based news channel was on Thursday outrageously likened to convicted Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab by a college principal before he was confined inside the principal’s chamber and badly beaten up by his staff while covering a student agitation.