Patna: Before the Lok Sabha elections, the Bihar Cabinet was expanded on Friday and 21 ministers took oath at Patna Raj Bhavan. During this period, many ministers from BJP and JDU quota have been included in Nitish Kumar's cabinet.
Among those who took oath were Mangal Pandey, Nitin Naveen, Janak Ram, Renu Devi, Neeraj Kumar Bablu, Nitish Mishra, Kedar Gupta, Dilip Jaiswal, Hari Sahni, Krishnanandan Paswan, Surendra Mehta and Santosh from BJP quota.
In JDU quota, the old ministers have been repeated. Ashok Chaudhary, Maheshwar Hazari, Jayant Raj, Jama Khan, Lacey Singh, Ratnesh Sada, Madan Sahni, Sushil Kumar and Sheela Mandal have taken oath. All of them have also held ministerial posts in the Grand Alliance government.
According to the number of MLAs in Bihar, 35 to 36 ministers can be made. There are already 9 ministers including the Chief Minister. Twelve ministers are from BJP and 9 from JDU. The total number of ministers has now reached 30. However, some ministerial posts are still kept vacant.
The NDA government was formed in Bihar on 28 January, since then there was talk of cabinet expansion. On January 28, eight ministers took oath along with Nitish Kumar, in which Samrat Chaudhary and Vijay Sinha took oath as Deputy CM. Apart from this, Prem Kumar from BJP, Vijay Kumar Choudhary from JDU, Vijendra Yadav, Shravan Kumar and Santosh Suman from HAM and independent Sumit Singh took oath as ministers.
Hari Sahni, who became minister from BJP quota, comes from Mithilanchal region. He took oath in Maithili. Neeraj Kumar Bablu raised slogans of Jai Shri Ram after taking oath. Slogans of Jai Shri Ram echoed in the Raj Bhavan during the swearing-in ceremony.
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, both Deputy CMs Samrat Chaudhary and Vijay Sinha were present during the swearing-in ceremony. Apart from this, many leaders and workers of BJP-JDU were present in Raj Bhavan.
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