CM, Sushil Modi, Rabri Devi take oath in Bihar council

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, his deputy Sushil Kumar Modi and predecessor Rabri Devi were among the 10 newly-elected members of the state legislative council to have been administered oath of office here today.

Eleven people had been declared elected unopposed to the legislative council on April 19, out of whom all but one were administered oath by Deputy Chairman Haroon Rashid, a release from the Vidhan Parishad said.

Besides Kumar, Modi and Rabri Devi, others who took oath today included Sanjay Paswan (BJP), Prem Chandra Mishra (Congress), Rameshwar Mahto and Khalid Anwar (JDU), Ram Chandra Purve and Syed Khurshid Mohammed Mohsin (RJD) and Santosh Kumar Suman (HAM), it said.

State health minister and BJP leader Mangal Pandey was out of station and likely to take oath at a later date.

All the 11 were declared elected unopposed since the number of candidates equalled the number of vacancies, which had necessitated the biennial elections to the Upper House.

Among those elected, Kumar, Modi, Pandey and Rabri Devi were sitting MLCs, and they have been re-elected.

Purve is the state president of the RJD, while Suman is the son of former CM Jitan Ram Manjhi, the founder and sole MLA of the Hindustani Awam Morcha.

Manjhi had quit the NDA and joined the RJD-Congress combine earlier this year.

The Congress has been able to send a member to the state legislative council after more than a decade, as it did not have the requisite number of MLAs during the period.

The biennial polls also saw tallies of the JD(U) and the BJP dropping by two and one, respectively, while that of the RJD rose by three.