Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar expanded his cabinet on Friday by inducting 21 ministers.
The move comes 47 days after he took oath (on January 28) to head the new National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in the state.
The new ministers were administered the oath to office and secrecy by governor Rajendra Arlekar at a function at the Raj Bhavan, amid chants of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and ‘Nitish Kumar zindabad’ by the guests, especially those belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Janata Dal United (JDU), respectively. Nitish was present on the occasion.
Among the newly inducted ministers, 12 are from the BJP while nine hail from Nitish’s JDU.
With the expansion, the council of ministers in the state has 30 members now, including the chief minister.
Bihar, with a 243-member Legislative Assembly, can have a maximum of 36 ministers as per the constitutional provisions that limit the size of the cabinet to 15 per cent of the Assembly’s size.
Sources said that the delay was partly caused by the budget session of the Legislative Assembly, which ended on March 1. The new government did not want to take the risk of having annoyed MLAs at hand while having a slim majority in the House, especially when the Opposition was bringing cut motions to budgets and amendments to the bills being introduced.
The other reasons behind the delay were Nitish going on a tour of Britain and the BJP being busy in three public rallies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and one of Union home minister Amit Shah in Bihar.
Among the ministers inducted on Friday, the BJP has brought in six new faces, while the JDU has banked on the experience of leaders who were ministers in the previous governments.
Both the parties gave short shrift to women despite tall promises about their empowerment. The BJP and the JDU inducted a woman minister each. They are the only ones in the entire cabinet of 30 ministers.
The two allies tried to juggle the caste equations in the induction of ministers while keeping in mind the upcoming Lok Sabha elections and 2025 Assembly elections, the JDU stood out by having four Dalit ministers out of the nine that took oath. It signalled that Nitish intended to woo voters belonging to the Scheduled Castes. On the other hand, the BJP inducted just two Dalits in the new lot of ministers.
Among the general category leaders inducted as ministers, the BJP accommodated five, while the JDU gave place to one. The rest of the ministers in both the parties were from the Other Backward Castes (OBC) and the Extremely Backward Castes (EBC).
“The cabinet expansion was bound to happen because the existing ministers were burdened with several departments. The ministers will now visit the field and monitor the government schemes. The speed of development will increase further,” BJP spokesperson Ajay Alok said.