Missing from House

• This legislative session, key ministers were missing till March 9. They were busy campaigning for the bypolls. So The budget for education was moved by parliamentary affairs minister Shravan Kumar as education minister Krishna Nandan Prasad Verma was busy in Jehanabad. Even Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi and health minister Mangal Pandey were missing when the budgetary demands for their respective departments were tabled in the legislature. RJD MLA Abdul Bari Siddiqui wondered if four ministers in the Nitish government had quit. Incidentally, the absence in legislative proceedings was witnessed in the Opposition bench also as leader of Opposition in the Assembly Tejashwi Yadav matched chief minister Nitish Kumar and deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi in missing the House. In the absence of Tejashwi it was left to RJD MLA Bhola Yadav to go against the government as Tej Pratap Yadav looked on.

Bijendra's new target

• Power minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav has a habit of picking on some particular leader in the Opposition for his sarcastic remarks. On International Women's Day when the stage was left for women legislators, RJD MLA Ilyas Hussain stood up to make a point. "I thought Ilyas Saheb was something else," Bijendra Yadav quipped. However, his favourite appears to be senior RJD leader Abdul Bari Siddiqui, who has also been his neighbour. As Siddiqui stood up to intervene during a minister's reply, Bijendra remarked: "Siddiqui Saheb's mind activates itself when he is sitting in the Opposition. When he is on this side (the treasury bench), it goes to sleep." When the BJP was in the Opposition Bijendra's favourite used to be Nand Kishore Yadav.

Selfie-less CM

• Chief minister Nitish Kumar appears to have become weary about having selfies snapped ever since a man was photographed with him at 1 Aney Marg who later turned out to be an accused in a liquor-related case. The wife of a senior police official wanted to take a selfie with Nitish after a police function. "The CM looked genuinely shocked and left the venue immediately," said another official who was present at the venue.

Red tape

• A person coming to Patna by flight for the first time after implementation of prohibition recalled his experience, stressing that he genuinely did not know about the anti-liquor laws in Bihar and had brought two bottles of foreign liquor for his friend. When he got down he read a notice that those carrying liquor bottles had to surrender it at the airport. He approached the desk concerned, and was greeted by a weary official. When he declared that he had to surrender two bottles of liquor, the official showed him the way to the toilet. "The official asked me to go to the toilet and wash out the liquor in the washbasin and leave the empty bottles there and go out of the airport. When I insisted, he said that surrender of liquor bottles needed too much paper work and he would have to sign in at least 50 papers. Ultimately, he asked me to leave the airport with the bottles in my luggage," said the passenger.