Abstract. I present the optical photometry, spectroscopy using HCT of Blue compact dwarf (BCD) galaxies. The BCDs are observed through UBVRI filters. The colour-colour diagram (CCD) of U-B vs V-I and U-B vs B-V are created from integrated magnitudes. We have for the first time employed the mixed population technique using CCDs to find out ages of the underlying population intermixed with the starburst regions. A combination of few Gyr population, few hundred million years population and an young burst of age 5-15 Myr is detected for most of these galaxies. The structure of BCDs is a smooth background of low surface brightness (LSB) old stellar population and intermixed with the clumps of H II regions. The spectra of BCDs are typical H II region kind of spectra. The electron densities are 100 cm^-3 and temperatures are in the range 6000-15000 K. The oxygen abundance is calculated using the standard bright line methods. The oxygen abundance (log[O/H] + 12) of the sample of BCDs varies from as low as 7.9 to as high as 8.5. So these galaxies are (1/5 - 1/2.5) times metal poor when compared to solar. The BCDs are observed through H_α filters installed in the HFOSC system. The H_α fluxes and luminosities are used to calculate star formation rates (SFR) that are in the range 0.01 to 0.1 M_⊙/yr for individual H II regions and ranges between 0.1 to 1.0 M_⊙/yr for the whole galaxy. The archival data from 2MASS is used to obtain the integrated colour-colour diagrams of (J-H) vs (V-K). NIR colours are less affected by reddening and are better signatures of old stellar population. The results are compared with optical CCD, the interesting dichotomy are presented.