The gamma-ray blazar OJ 287 was in a high activity state during December 2015 - February 2016 .
Coinciding with this high brightness state , we observed this source for photometry on 40 nights in R -band and for polarimetry on 9 epochs in UBVRI bands .
During the period of our observations , the source brightness varied between 13.20 \pm 0.04 to 14.98 \pm 0.04 mag and the degree of polarization ( P ) fluctuated between 6.0 \pm 0.3 % and 28.3 \pm 0.8 % in R -band .
Focusing on intra-night optical variability ( INOV ) , we find a duty cycle of about 71 % using \chi ^ { 2 } -statistics , similar to that known for blazars .
From INOV data , the shortest variability time scale is estimated to be 142 \pm 38 min yielding a lower limit of the observed Doppler factor \delta _ { 0 } = 1.17 , the magnetic field strength B \leq 3.8 G and the size of the emitting region R _ { s } < 2.28 \times 10 ^ { 14 } cm .
On inter-night timescales , a significant anti-correlation between R -band flux and P is found .
The observed P at U -band is generally larger than that observed at longer wavelength bands suggesting a wavelength dependent polarization .
Using V -band photometric and polarimetric data from Steward Observatory obtained during our monitoring period we find a varied correlation between P and V -band brightness .
While an anticorrelation is seen between P and V -band mag at sometimes , no correlation is seen at other times , thereby , suggesting the presence of more than one short-lived shock components in the jet of OJ 287 .