Patna: The Home portfolio of Bihar, which Chief Minister Nitish Kumar kept with himself all through his nearly 20-year-long tenure, has been given to his deputy, BJP leader Samrat Chowdhury, this time, according to an official notification issued Friday.
On the other hand, the Finance portfolio, which has been held by the BJP whenever it has entered into an alliance with the JD(U), has gone to the Nitish Kumar-led party this time. Senior leader Bijendra Prasad Yadav got the Finance and Commercial Tax departments.
Another Deputy CM Vijay Kumar Sinha got Revenue & Land reforms and Mines & Geology departments, the notification said.
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has kept the portfolios of the General Administration Department, Cabinet Secretariat and Vigilance with himself.
While senior JD(U) leader Shrowan Kumar has been given portfolios of Rural Development and Transport departments, his party colleague Ashok Chowdhary got the Rural Works department portfolio.
JD(U) leader Vijay Chowdhary has been given the portfolios of Building Construction, Water Resources and Parliamentary Affairs, while Madan Sahni of the same party got the Social Welfare department portfolio, the notification said.
The BJP’s Shreyasi Singh has been given portfolios of Sports and Information and Technology, while her party’s Arun Shankar Prasad got the Tourism department. Sanjay Tiger, also of the BJP, has been given the Labour Resources department, it said.
Deepak Prakash of the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party and HAM(S)’s Santosh Suman have been given the portfolios of Panchayati Raj department and Minor Water Resources department, respectively.
LJP (RV) MLAs Sanjay Kumar and Sanjay Kumar Singh became Sugarcane and Public Health Engineering Department ministers.
Other members of the Cabinet included Mangal Pandey (Health and Law), Dilip Jaiswal (Industries), Leshi Singh (Food Consumer and Protection), Nitin Nabin (Road Construction and Urban Development and Housing), Ram Kripal Yadav (Agriculture), Sunil Kumar (Education, and Science, Technology and Technical Education department).
Mohd Zama Khan (Minority Affairs), Surendra Mehta (Animal and Fishery Resources), Narayan Prasad (Disaster Management), Rama Nishad (Backward Class and Extremely Backward Classes welfare), Lakhendra Kumar Roshan (SC and ST Welfare) and Pramod Kumar (Cooperative) are also the remaining members of the Cabinet, the notification said.
Nitish Kumar was on Thursday sworn in as the Bihar chief minister for a record 10th term here at a grand ceremony.
Along with 74-year-old Kumar, 26 ministers took the oath of office: 14 from the Bharatiya Janata Party, eight from Janata Dal (United), two from Lok Jan Shakti Party (Ram Vilas), and one each from Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) and Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM).
PTI
