Top BJP leaders to attend Nitish Kumar swearing-in

Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP President Jagat Prakash Nadda will attend oath-taking ceremony of Nitish Kumar. Kumar will take oath as the Chief Minister of Bihar for the fourth straight term.

New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP President Jagat Prakash Nadda will attend the oath-taking ceremony of JD(U) chief and Bihar Chief Minister-designate Nitish Kumar in Patna on Monday, party's top source confirmed.

Kumar will take oath as the Chief Minister of Bihar for the fourth straight term this afternoon after closely-fought legislative assembly elections in the state.

Kumar, after meeting Governor Phagu Chauhan to stake claim to form NDA government in Bihar, had on Sunday announced that the oath-taking, as well as the swearing-in ceremony of the new cabinet, will be held at around 4.30 pm on Monday.

The leaders of the NDA legislature party, which had secured a victory in the recently-concluded election in Bihar, had on Sunday met to deliberate on selecting a leader to lead the party.

It had named Kumar as the leader of the NDA legislature party thus paving the way for his return as chief minister for the fourth consecutive term.

BJP's Tarkishore Prasad, the MLA from Bihar's Katihar, will replace Sushil Modi as his deputy.

The BJP had, from the beginning of the election campaign, had maintained that Kumar will be the Chief Ministerial candidate for the NDA government in the state.

Notably, this is the seventh time when Nitish Kumar will take an oath to become the Chief Minister of Bihar. He had served as the Chief Minister of the state for little over seven days in March 2000, after which he was elected in 2005 when he served a full term.

He was re-elected to power in November 2010, after which he served for four years before resigning, and had again taken oath as Chief Minister in February 2015. He was voted to power in 2015 Assembly election as part of the 'Mahagathbandhan'.

However, after corruption allegations were levelled against his deputy Tejashwi Yadav in 2015, Nitish resigned only to be sworn in as Chief Minister merely 12 hours later joining hands with the BJP to form a government in the state.

The NDA has secured a 125-seat majority in the 243-seat strong Bihar Legislative Assembly of which BJP won on 74 seats, JD(U) on 43 while eight seats were won by two other NDA constituents.

The RJD, on the other hand, emerged as the single-largest party with 75 seats while the Congress only won 19 of the 70 seats it had contested on.

(ANI)