Thirty-one ministers were inducted in the Nitish Kumar government on Tuesday as the JD(U) chief broke the alliance with the NDA and formed the government with the support of the Grand Alliance or the “Mahagathbandhan.”
Among the ministers who took oath, 16 were from RJD, 11 from Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), two from Congress, one from ex-CM Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) and one Independent. The Congress is represented by a Dalit and a Muslim.
Nitish Kumar has kept with himself Home Department, general administration, cabinet secretariat, election and any other departments not assigned to others, said an official communication. Deputy CM Tejashwi Prasad Yadav has got key portfolios like health, road construction, urban housing and development and rural works.
Yadav’s elder brother Tej Pratap Yadav has been given environment, forestry and climate change. Besides the CM and the deputy CM, only Vijay Kumar Chaudhary (finance, commercial tax and parliamentary affairs) and Bijendra Yadav (power and planning and development) have got more than one portfolios.
The ministers from RJD include Tejashwi Yadav, Tej Pratap Yadav, Alok Mehta, Surendra Prasad Yadav, Ramanand Yadav, Kumar Sarvajeet, Lalit Yadav, Samir Kumar Mahaseth, Chandrashekhar, Jitendra Kumar Rai, Anita Devi and Sudhakar Singh, Israel Mansuri, Surendra Ram, Kartikeya Singh, Shahnawaz Alam, Shamim Ahmed took oath.
The number of Muslims in the new cabinet is five, up from only one in the previous NDA government that fell last week after the chief minister severed ties with the BJP. The RJD has, predictably, given a significant number of seven berths to Yadavs, including Tej Pratap Yadav, the elder son of party president Lalu Prasad.
Shortly after the oath-taking of the newly inducted ministers, CM Nitish Kumar had said that the portfolios will be allocated shortly and a meeting of the entire cabinet will be held on Tuesday.
The state cabinet can have up to 36 ministers, including the chief minister. With the induction of 31 ministers on Tuesday, few berths have been kept vacant for future expansion.
Nitish Kumar was sworn in as Bihar’s chief minister a day after quitting ostensibly over a row with coalition partner BJP on Wednesday. He formed government in alliance with his former rivals in RJD and Congress.
His deputy and RJD’s leader Tejashwi Yadav was the only other minister sworn in by Governor Phagu Chauhan. Kumar who heads the JD(U) took oath for a record eighth time, as head of the Mahagathbandhan’ (grand alliance) which it had dumped in 2015, to join hands with the BJP.
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