Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar gets Supreme Court notice for plagiarism

NEW DELHI:  The Supreme Court has issued a notice to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish asking him to explain why he should not be a party to a copyright violation case.

An SC bench issued the notice to Nitish, seeking his response on a petition filed by former JNU scholar turned politician Atul Kumar Singh. Singh had contested the Lok Sabha elections from Chapra in 2004 as an Independent.

The top court also stayed Delhi High Court’s interim order giving liberty to Kumar to reopen his case for deletion of his name as a party.

Singh alleged that a book published by Asian Development Research Institute and “endorsed” by the Bihar CM, was a plagiarised version of his research project.

He sought damages of Rs 25 lakh from the defendants, including Nitish, ADRI member secretary Shaibal Gupta, ADRI, and Centre for Economic Policy and Public Finance.