Nitish inducts 27 ministers in cabinet

Sachchidanand Jha

Patna : Bihar CM Ntish Kumar on July 29, 2017, expanded his two- day old cabinet by inducting 27 ministers. Both the JD(U) and BJP kept in mind social engineering factor while selecting their ministers. Upper castes, Dalits, Extremely backward castes(EBC) and Yadavs have got fair representation in the cabinet. Majority of ministers have administrative experience and are among seasoned politicians of Bihar.

Fourteen JD(U) legislators including Bijendra Yadav, Shrawan Kumar, Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lallan Singh, Jai Kumar Singh, Manju Verma, Khurshid Ahmad, Dinesh Chandra Yadav, Maheshwar Hazari, Krishnandan Prasad Verma, Kapildev Kamat, Shailesh Kumar, Madan Sahni and Santosh Nirala took oath as minsiters at Raj Bhavan at 5 pm onwards. Governor K N Tripathi administered them oath office. Manju Verma is the lone woman in the cabinet while Khurshid Ahmad is lone Muslim.

The BJP has got 12 ministerial berths. They include Nand Kishore Yadav, Prem Kumar, Ram Narayan Mandal, Vinod Narayan Jha, Vijay Sinha, Pramod Kumar, Rana Randhir, Ramesh Rishidev, Vinod Singh, Krishna Kumar Rishi, Mangal Pandey and Suresh Sharma took oath as ministers. Former state BJP chief Mangal Pandey took oath at 8.15 pm as he was out of Patna.

State LJP chief  Pashupati Kumar Paras also took oath as minister. Paras, who is not a legislator, is younger brother of LJP chief and union minister Ram Vilas Paswan, who was also present at Raj Bhavan. The LJP has two members in the assembly.

Two other NDA constituents: RLSP and HAM(S), are yet to get repesentation in the cabinet. HAM(S) president Jitan Ram Manjhi, a former Bihar chief minister, is the lone MLA of his party in the Bihar assembly but he is not inclined to join the cabinet as minister now. The RLSP, which has two MLAs, had suggested one name but that probably did find favour with power that be.

Nitish resigned as the chief minister of Grand Alliance government on July 26 afternoon and the same night staked his claim to form the next government with the support of 58 member strong NDA. He was sworn in as the chief minister for the sixth time on July 27 morning with BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi as his deputy. Nitish won the floor test on July 28.