Nitish Kumar takes oath as Bihar Chief Minister for record 10th time

Nitish Kumar began his 10th term as Bihar chief minister on Thursday, inducting a 26-member cabinet with broad caste representation

Nitish Kumar was sworn in for a record 10th term as Bihar’s Chief Minister (CM), along with a 26-member council of ministers at Patna’s Gandhi Maidan on Thursday morning. The ceremony was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union ministers and CMs of several National Democratic Alliance (NDA)-ruled states.

 

The 26 ministers include Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Samrat Choudhary and Vijay Kumar Sinha, both of whom were deputy CMs in the previous government, and were elected as the BJP's leader and deputy leader, respectively, at a party meeting on Wednesday. The 26 ministers include 10 who were not members of the outgoing council of ministers.

 

Notable new entrants include 2018 Commonwealth Games shooting gold medallist Shreyasi Singh of the BJP, Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM) chief and Rajya Sabha member Upendra Kushwaha’s son Deepak Prakash, who is not a member of either of the two Houses of the Bihar legislature, and Aurai MLA-elect Rama Nishad of the BJP, daughter-in-law of former Union minister Jaynarayan Nishad, from the Extremely Backward Class (EBC) Mallah community, which the Opposition Mahagathbandhan had tried to court during the election campaign.

 

Shreyasi Singh, Rama Nishad and Janata Dal United (JDU)’s Lesi Singh are three women members in the council. BJP’s Ram Kripal Yadav, a former Union minister, who had lost the Patliputra LoK Sabha seat in the 2024 LS polls to Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)’s Misa Bharti, was inducted in the council of ministers. He has won the Assembly polls from the Danapur seat. JDU’s Mohammed Zama Khan, the only Muslim legislator of the NDA, was re-inducted in the council of ministers. He was the minorities’ welfare minister in the previous government.

 

Of the 27 members, eight belong to upper castes, five are Dalits, one is Muslim, and 13 are from Other Backward Classes and EBCs.

 

Notable absentees from the new cabinet include BJP’s Nitish Mishra, who was the industries minister in the outgoing council of ministers, Jiwesh Mishra, and Sanjay Saraogi.

 

At the swearing-in ceremony, after Nitish Kumar was administered the oath of office, Modi had the crowd at Gandhi Maidan in raptures when he swirled his ‘gamchha’, a cotton scarf, above his head. The PM had also waved his ‘gamchha’ during his victory speech at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s national headquarters in New Delhi on November 14 after the results of the polls had shown the NDA headed for a resounding win. The PM also greeted the crowd by clasping Kumar’s hand, which held aloft. 

 

In a post on X, Modi described Kumar as an experienced administrator with a proven track record of good governance for many years. “My best wishes to him for his tenure ahead,” the PM wrote on X.

 

Besides Kumar, of the 26 ministers sworn-in, 14 are from the BJP, which is the single largest party in the Bihar Assembly with 89 seats, followed by 8 from Nitish Kumar’s JDU, which won 85 seats, two from Union minister Chirag Paswan-led Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), which won 19 seats, and one each from Union minister Jitan Ram Manjhi-led Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) and Upendra Kushwaha-led RLM. Manjhi and Kushwaha’s parties won five and four seats, respectively.

 

Besides Choudhary and Sinha, other BJP leaders who took oath included Mangal Pandey, Nitin Nabin and Surendra Prasad Mehta, all of whom were ministers in the previous government. State BJP president Dilip Jaiswal, who had resigned from the cabinet nearly two years ago in keeping with the party's 'one person, one post' policy, was back in the council of ministers.

 

From the JDU quota, all the inductees were ministers in the previous government. From HAM (S), Santosh Suman, Union Minister Manjhi's son, was re-inducted. LJP (RV) ministers include Sanjay Kumar Singh, who defeated Tej Pratap Yadav in Mahua. From the RLM quota, it wasn’t party chief Upendra Kushwaha’s wife Snehlata, who won the Sasaram seat, but their son Deepak Prakash, who was inducted in the council of ministers.

 

Besides Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Dilip Jaiswal, Pramod Kumar, Ashok Choudhary and Santosh Suman are members of the state legislative council. Nitish Kumar could expand his council further, if he so wishes, as the maximum number of ministers permissible, including the CM, is 36, that is 15 per cent of the total seats in the Assembly.