Nitish shifts home quietly

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has quietly shifted home - from 7, Circular Road to 1, Aney Marg. The shift was so quiet that when Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad arrived one evening to meet him, he found the chief minister was not there. He was told Kumar had moved permanently to his official residence, vacating the second bungalow that had been assigned to him. A leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in the Opposition in Bihar, said: "There seems to be little communication between the two brothers." (Kumar and Prasad are referred to as brothers, after journalist Sankarshan Thakur's book on them, The Brothers Bihari.) Janata Dal (United) leaders refused to concede that the Opposition had any part to play in the move. "The house on Circular Road will be the new office of the Bihar Vikas Mission and the CM will have an office there," one of them said. The BJP and its leader Sushil Kumar Modi, who had earlier served as Kumar's deputy, had taken on the CM for occupying two official bungalows. Kumar had been assigned the 7, Circular Road home after he quit as chief minister following the drubbing in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, but he did not vacate it when he became CM again. "It's like a person getting a salary and a pension," Modi had said.