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As many as 32 ministers were sworn in to Bihar Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary’s Cabinet on Thursday, including former CM Nitish Kumar’s son Nishant Kumar, who has been given the Health portfolio.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among those who attended the swearing-in event at Patna’s Gandhi Maidan. On the way to the venue from the airport, Modi’s vehicle was showered with flower petals by people who lined up on both sides of the road.
Former chief minister Nitish Kumar, Union ministers Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, J P Nadda, Jitan Ram Manjhi and Chirag Paswan, BJP national president Nitin Nabin, and RLM chief Upendra Kushwaha also attended the function.
After the ceremony, PM Modi was seen interacting with Nitish Kumar as well as Nishant.
Choudhary’s Cabinet now includes the sons of three former chief ministers — Nitish Kumar’s son Nishant, Jagannath Mishra’s son Nitish Mishra, and Jitan Ram Manjhi’s son Santosh Kumar Suman. All three were sworn in on Thursday.
Nishant, who is widely seen as the next leader of the JD(U) in Bihar after his father resigned as CM and moved to the Rajya Sabha, had earlier decided not to take up a deputy CM position. He agreed to become a minister after persuasion from senior party leaders, including Rajiv Ranjan Singh, better known as Lalan Singh, sources said.
In total, 15 ministers from the BJP, 13 from the JD(U), two from LJP(RV) and one each from HAM(S) and RLM, took oath on Thursday. CM Samrat Choudhary and two deputies from the JD(U), Bijendra Prasad Yadav and Vijay Kumar Choudhary, had been sworn in earlier. Now, the Cabinet is just one short of its maximum permitted strength of 36.
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Senior BJP leader and former health minister Mangal Pandey was not inducted into the new Cabinet, but officials said he might be given a key organisational position at the national level.
Hours after the swearing-in ceremony, the portfolios for the new ministers were announced, with Nishant becoming Bihar’s new Health minister. Nishant’s party colleagues, Deputy CMs Bijendra Prasad Yadav and Vijay Kumar Choudhary, got Finance and Water Resources departments, respectively.
CM Choudhary has kept several key portfolios, including Home, General Administration, Cabinet Secretariat, Vigilance and Civil Aviation.
BJP’s Mithilesh Tiwari will be the new Education minister, in place of JD(U)’s Sunil Kumar, who has now been given the Rural Works department. Shreyasi Singh, who was earlier Sports minister, has now got the important Industries department. BJP leader Vijay Kumar Sinha is now Agriculture minister, while Nitish Mishra, who returned to the Cabinet, has been made Urban Development minister.
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The ministers sworn in from BJP were Ram Kripal Yadav, Kedar Prasad Gupta, Nitish Mishra, Mithilesh Tiwari, Rama Nishad, Vijay Kumar Sinha, Dilip Jaiswal, Pramod Kumar, Lakhendra Pawan Roshan, Sanjay Singh Tiger, Shailendra Kumar, Nand Kishore Ram, Ramchandra Prasad, Arun Shanker Prasad and Shreyasi Singh.
JD(U) ministers were Nishant Kumar, Shravan Kumar, Ashok Choudhary, Lesi Singh, Madan Sahani, Sunil Kumar, Zaman Khan, Bhagwan Singh Kushwaha, Sheela Kumari, Damodar Raut, Shailesh or Bulo Mandal and Ratnesh Sada. LJP(RV) ministers include Sanjay Singh and Sanjay Paswan.
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