Nitish Kumar on Friday was sworn in as the 34th Chief Minister of Bihar, along with 28 Ministers — 12 each from the RJD and the JD(U) and four from the Congress. The Nitish Ministry is a mix of young and inexperienced as well as old and experienced. RJD supremo lalu Prasad’s younger son Tejaswi Prasad will be the Deputy Chief Minister and his elder brother Tej Pratap, who took oath next to his younger brother, will be the Health Minister.
With the induction of both his sons, who have been elected as MlAs first time, lalu ensured an upper hand to what was once the first family of Bihar. In the hierarchy, it will be the two brothers after Nitish and only then the number of senior RJD leader Abdul Bari Siddiqui comes. Bijendra Prasad Yadav of JD(U) follows him.
Apart from accepting lalu’s son as his deputy, Nitish also made another compromise by allowing the RJD to walk away with major portfolios. While he will keep Home, Information & Publicity and General Administration departments with him, the ‘lucrative’ Road Construction and Buildings Construction portfolio went to Tejaswi. The Finance Ministry also went to senior RJD leader Abdul Bari Siddiqui while Education Ministry went to Congress’ Ashok Chaudhary.
Governor Ramnath Kovind, who administered oath to the Ministers at the crowded Gandhi Maidan, played like a teacher and corrected Tej Pratap Yadav when he wrongly pronounced two words while taking oath. He asked him to repeat the oath of secrecy once again. Kovind also corrected two other Ministers.
A former Minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary, who was number two in the previous Government, is being tipped for the post of Assembly Speaker.
While selecting the Ministers from the JD(U), Nitish sidelined some old faces like Narendra Narayan Yadav, PK Shahi, Shyam Rajak, leshi Singh and many more.
Apart from two sons of lalu as well as Siddiqui, other Ministers from RJD are: Alok Kumar Mehta, Chandrika Rai, Ram Vichar Rai, Shiv Chandra Ram, Abdul Ghafoor, Chandrashekhar, Muneshwar Choudhary, Anita Devi and Vijay Prakash.
From the JD(U) side, those who took oath are: Bijendra Yadav, Rajiv Ranjan Singh lalan, Shrawan Kumar, Jai Kumar Singh, Krishna Nandan Verma, Maheshwar Hazari, Shailesh Kumar, Manju Devi, Santosh Kumar Nirala, Khurshid Firoz Ahmad, Madan Sahni and Kapildeo Kamat.
The four Ministers from Congress are: Ashok Choudhary, Awadhesh Kumar Singh, Abdul Jalil Mastan and Madan Mohan Jha.
A galaxy of top leaders of different parties arrived to greet Nitish and watch the swearing-in ceremony. AICC vice-president Rahul Gandhi was last to reach and arrived at the fag-end of the function. Former PM Deve Gowda, JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav, NCP president Sharad Pawar, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, Ajit Singh and representatives of the Shiv Sena, the JMM and the DMK, Chief Ministers Mamata Banerjee (West Bengal), Arvind Kejriwal (Delhi), S Sidarammaiah (Karnataka), Tarun Gogoi (Assam), Veer Bhadra Singh (Himachal Pradesh), Deputy CM of Punjab Sukhbir Singh Badal, former CMs of J&K Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah and Sheila Dixit of Delhi. The Centre was represented by M Venkaiah Naidu. However, neither UP CM Akhilesh Yadav nor Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav turned up.
Farooq Abdullah publicly expressed his views that Nitish should now assume central role and line up a big force against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP. “Modi can be countered with development works in States,” he added.
Former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda, who sat between Rahul Gandhi and RJD boss lalu Prasad in the front row, later on said that a new environment was building up against the BJP. “This is the first attempt to bring secular forces at one platform,” he commented.
West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee had an hour-long meeting with her Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal in a posh hotel. later on they were joined by DMK’s MK Stalin and former Union Minister TR Baalu of the same party.
The swearing-in ceremony was witnessed by a huge crowd, which raised slogans in favour of the Ministers during their oath. The crowd left leaving behind thick clouds of dust in the sprawling ground.