Alok Pandey Shyam Kumar

The dates for the Assembly elections in Bihar are yet to be announced, but ground level campaigns with a local flavour, featuring songs in Bhojpuri and Hindi, have already taken off, and promise to provide a foil to what promises to be an intense and high-decibel run-up to the polls.

Farmers in Bihar are staring into the skies, waiting. If it doesn't rain in the coming week, they say, their rice crops would wilt away. The monsoon has brought Bihar only two-thirds the normal level of rain, bringing the state to the brink of agrarian distress.

The latest political battle in Bihar as the state heads for Assembly elections is over special economic status for the state.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in Patna today that the Centre will sanction more than the 50,000-crore economic package he had promised Bihar, but said he would not make that announcement today. "I remember my promise and will fulfill it," he said.

In this season of tough postures, here is one from Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal United, which has been repeatedly told by Lalu Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal that Mr Kumar is not acceptable as chief ministerial candidate if they will contest this year's elections in Bihar as allies.

Prashant Kishor - a 37-year-old who flew in a few years ago from Africa to become a key member of the Narendra Modi campaign strategy team - is in Bihar, where elections will be held in a few months from now.

A political tussle has broken out in Bihar over the compensation that is being paid to the families of the 70 people who lost their lives in the two massive earthquakes that struck the region in the past month.

BJP chief Amit Shah and Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh will kick off the party's campaign for the Bihar Assembly elections at a mega rally in Patna today. It has been timed to coincide with the 125th birth anniversary of Dalit icon BR Ambedkar.

BJP parliamentarian from Assam says that anyone who believes that smoking causes cancer should consider this - "I know two elderly people who drank a bottle of alcohol and smoked 60 cigarettes every day. One is still alive, the other died at 86."

Giriraj Singh of Bihar has a high hit rate in delivering maximally offensive remarks, but that hasn't impeded his political growth. In November, he was made a Union Minister though he was on bail at the time in a case that accused him of a hate speech in his home state. Ahead of the national election, Mr Singh had vowed publicly that critics of Nar...

Hours before he seeks a vote of confidence in the state Assembly, Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi scripted yet another controversy by saying, in a public speech, "You want to become a minister, come to me."

Rupam Pathak met the man she stabbed at his house in Bihar when she moved from Imphal to Purnea as the principal of a new private school. Raj Kishore Kesari, the BJP MLA for the area, inaugurated her school. Three years later, Pathak smuggled a kitchen knife into a janta durbar at Kesri's residence. Kesri had just been re-elected for a ...

The dates for the Assembly elections in Bihar are yet to be announced, but ground level campaigns with a local flavour, featuring songs in Bhojpuri and Hindi, have already taken off, and promise to provide a foil to what promises to be an intense and high-decibel run-up to the polls.

Farmers in Bihar are staring into the skies, waiting. If it doesn't rain in the coming week, they say, their rice crops would wilt away. The monsoon has brought Bihar only two-thirds the normal level of rain, bringing the state to the brink of agrarian distress.

The latest political battle in Bihar as the state heads for Assembly elections is over special economic status for the state.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in Patna today that the Centre will sanction more than the 50,000-crore economic package he had promised Bihar, but said he would not make that announcement today. "I remember my promise and will fulfill it," he said.

In this season of tough postures, here is one from Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal United, which has been repeatedly told by Lalu Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal that Mr Kumar is not acceptable as chief ministerial candidate if they will contest this year's elections in Bihar as allies.

Prashant Kishor - a 37-year-old who flew in a few years ago from Africa to become a key member of the Narendra Modi campaign strategy team - is in Bihar, where elections will be held in a few months from now.

A political tussle has broken out in Bihar over the compensation that is being paid to the families of the 70 people who lost their lives in the two massive earthquakes that struck the region in the past month.

BJP chief Amit Shah and Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh will kick off the party's campaign for the Bihar Assembly elections at a mega rally in Patna today. It has been timed to coincide with the 125th birth anniversary of Dalit icon BR Ambedkar.

BJP parliamentarian from Assam says that anyone who believes that smoking causes cancer should consider this - "I know two elderly people who drank a bottle of alcohol and smoked 60 cigarettes every day. One is still alive, the other died at 86."

Giriraj Singh of Bihar has a high hit rate in delivering maximally offensive remarks, but that hasn't impeded his political growth. In November, he was made a Union Minister though he was on bail at the time in a case that accused him of a hate speech in his home state. Ahead of the national election, Mr Singh had vowed publicly that critics of Nar...

Hours before he seeks a vote of confidence in the state Assembly, Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi scripted yet another controversy by saying, in a public speech, "You want to become a minister, come to me."

Rupam Pathak met the man she stabbed at his house in Bihar when she moved from Imphal to Purnea as the principal of a new private school. Raj Kishore Kesari, the BJP MLA for the area, inaugurated her school. Three years later, Pathak smuggled a kitchen knife into a janta durbar at Kesri's residence. Kesri had just been re-elected for a ...