Bihar Cabinet Minister List 2022: RJD gets lion’s share in expanded Nitish Kumar cabinet | India News

PATNA: Lalu Prasad-led RJD’s standing in Bihar CM Nitish Kumar’s newly minted coalition was established on Tuesday when the party got the lion’s share of the cabinet spoils – 17 out of 33 berths – in a replication of JD(U)’s arrangement with estranged ally BJP in the previous government. Deputy CM Tejashwi Prasad Yadav was the only one who had been sworn in along with Nitish last week.

Nitish retained the home, general administration and cabinet secretariat portfolios while JD(U) got 11 of the 31 cabinet slots in the ministry expansion, maintaining status quo in terms of representation. In the erstwhile NDA government, JD(U) had 12 representatives in the ministry, including the CM’s post.

Congress got two berths and one each went to HAM-S and an Independent legislator. Three cabinet berths were kept vacant for any potential defection from the opposition camp or to accommodate the Left parties, should they choose to have a representative each in the government, sources said.

Deputy CM Tejashwi Prasad Yadav was allotted the health, road construction, rural works and urban development portfolios, all of which hog the bulk of budgetary allocations. His elder brother Tej Pratap Yadav, who had handled the health portfolio during his curtailed ministerial stint in 2015, got environment, forest and climate change.
In terms of caste and community arithmetic, there are eight Yadavs in the new cabinet and five Muslims, reviving Lalu Prasad’s tried-and-tested “MY” equation. The cabinet has three women, six ministers each from the upper and Scheduled Castes, and two each from the Kurmi and Kushwaha communities.
Samir Mahaseth is the only representative from the Vaishya (business) community. Three —Sheela Kumari, Anita Devi and Madan Sahni – hail from the extremely backward castes category.
After Tuesday’s allocation of ministerial berths, all eyes now would be on the Speaker as the Mahagathbandhan 2.0 government faces a floor test in the assembly on August 24.

Alleging “social imbalance” in the cabinet, former deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi of BJP said only two communities — Muslims and Yadavs – had garnered “more than 33%” of the berths, leaving castes like Kanu, Teli, Kalwar and Kayasth with no representation. Sushil Modi also questioned the alleged “marginalisation” of extremely backward castes given their population size. “Renu Devi had been made deputy CM by BJP, but no minister from the group was considered for the job of deputy CM this time,” he told TOI.
RJD brought 10 first-timers to the cabinet in Samir Kumar Mahaseth (industries), Ramanand Yadav (mines and geology), Kumar Sarvajeet (tourism), Jitendra Kumar Rai (art, culture and youth affairs), Sudhakar Singh (agriculture), Kartik Kumar (law), Shamim Ahmad (sugarcane industries), Md Shahnawaz (disaster management), Surendra Ram (labour resources) and Md Israel Mansoori (IT).
Both Congress ministers – Afaquae Alam (animal and fisheries resources) and Murari Prasad Gautam (Panchayati Raj) – are also cabinet debutants. HAM-S’s Santosh Kumar Suman and Independent Sumit Kumar Singh complete the line-up.
In the 33-strong cabinet, five – CM Nitish, Ashok Choudhary, Sanjay Jha, Santosh Suman and Kartik Kumar – are members of the state legislative council.