Bihar cabinet: CM Nitish Kumar allocates portfolios, keeps Home Ministry; Tejashwi Yadav gets Health
Bihar cabinet expansion: Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday allocated berths after 31 ministers took the oath. The CM has kept Home Ministry with himself and have given Health Ministry to his deputy and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav. RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav's elder son Tej Pratap has been made Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
CM Kumar has also kept with himself 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.
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.
After assuming the charge, deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav said, "This is the govt of poor people in Bihar. We'll work together to fulfill our promises. Since the new govt has been formed, there are discussions about employment & development... We have people from all castes, including backwards, minorities & Dalits."
HERE IS THE FULL LIST
Ministers - Portfolio
Earlier in the day, 31 ministers took oath, with the RJD getting a lion’s share, and care having been taken to represent all sections of the society, including the minorities. 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 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.
It, however, also gave representation to the upper castes in keeping with the wider social outreach by deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav.
Among those from the RJD quota were Kartikeya Singh, a Bhumihar MLC, and Sudhakar Singh, a Rajput, whose father Jagadanand Singh is currently the state president. The JD(U) has retained its ministers from the previous dispensation. The Congress is represented by a Dalit and a Muslim.
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