PATNA: Six new faces were among 21 legislators of the Bharatiya Janata Party and Janata Dal (United) sworn in as ministers on Friday, taking the number of ministers in the Nitish Kumar cabinet to 30 including the CM. Governor Vishwanath Arlekar administered the oath of office to the newly inducted ministers at Raj Bhavan.
The much-awaited cabinet expansion took place 48 days after Nitish and eight ministers, including two deputy chief ministers Samrat Choudhary and Vijay Kumar Sinha, were sworn in on January 28. This was soon after Nitish dumped the grand alliance with the RJD and Congress and joined hands with the BJP to form the NDA government in the state.
All the six new ministers -- Santosh Singh, Surendra Mehta, Kedar Gupta, Krishnanandan Paswan, Hari Sahni and Dilip Jaisawal -- are from the BJP. Altogether, 12 legislators from the saffron party were inducted as ministers in the Nitish cabinet during expansion on Friday. Mangal Pandey, Neeraj Singh Babloo, Nitish Kumar, Nitin Nabin, Renu Devi and Janak Ram, who had served as ministers earlier, were also inducted as ministers.
Of the list of 12 ministers from the BJP, three belonged to extremely backward classes (EBCs), two each to Brahmin, Rajput, Vaishya, Dalit-Mahadalit castes and one to Kayastha. EBCs have been given maximum representation in the cabinet expansion keeping the Lok Sabha elections in mind. They constituted nearly 36% of the state’s population, as per the latest caste-based survey report released by the Bihar government last year.
Similarly, Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) inducted nine ministers during cabinet expansion. They are Lesi Singh (Rajput), Sunil Kumar (SC), Madan Sahni (EBC), Ashok Choudhary (SC), Maheshwar Hazari (SC), Sheela Kumari (EBC), Jayant Raj (OBC), Ratnesh Sada (SC) and Zama Khan (Muslim).
They all had earlier served as ministers. Maheshwar Hazari has been included in place of Sanjay Kumar Jha who has now become a Rajya Sabha member from the JD(U) quota.
Of the nine newly inducted ministers from the JD(U), four of them come from the Dalit-Mahadalit community.
The BJP has inducted five members of the legislative council as ministers in the new cabinet expansion.
Meanwhile, congratulating all the newly inducted ministers, senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi said that every section of society has been given representation in the cabinet. However, Opposition leaders said that members of the Yadav (OBC) and Bhumihar (upper caste) have been given a raw deal during cabinet expansion.
