Nitish Kumar expands Cabinet, 21 legislators take oath as Ministers

PATNA — The Nitish Kumar-led government in Bihar on Friday expanded its Cabinet by inducting 21 legislators who were sworn-in as ministers here at a programme in Raj Bhavan.

Bihar Governor Rajendra Arlekar, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, two Deputy CMs Samrat Choudhary and Vijay Kumar Sinha, and other leaders were present at the swearing-in programme.

Both parties — Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Janata Dal-United (JD-U), have taken care of caste equations while naming ministers.

The Cabinet expansion took place after 46 days of the formation of the NDA government in Bihar.

As per the list of BJP, Renu Devi (EBC), Mangal Pandey (Brahmin), Nitish Mishra (Brahmin), Nitin Navin (Kayastha), Neeraj Kumar Bablu (Rajput), Santosh Singh (Rajput), Dilip Jaiswal (OBC), Hari Sahani (EBC), Kedar Prasad Gupta (OBC) and Krishnandan Paswan (Dalit) have taken the oath as ministers.

From JD-U, Ashok Choudhary (Dalit), Maheshwar Hazari (Dalit), Jayant Raj (OBC), Sunil Kumar (Dalit), Jama Khan (Pathan – upper caste), Sheela Mandal (EBC), Ratnesh Sada (Dalit), Madan Sahani (EBC), Janak Ram (Dalit) and Surendra Mehta took oath in Raj Bhawan as Cabinet ministers.

The BJP has brought some new faces — Santosh Singh, Dilip Jaiswal, Hari Sahani, Kedar Prasad Gupta, and Krishnandan Paswan, while the JD-U has inducted only Maheshwar Hazari as a new face in the Cabinet.

Maheshwar Hazari was brought as a Cabinet minister as Sanjay Kumar Jha went to Rajya Sabha.