Nitish Kumar to take oath as Bihar CM at 2 pm on Wednesday, Tejashwi to be his deputy

India

oi-Prakash KL

Patna, Aug 10: Nitish Kumar and Tejashwi Yadav will take oath as Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar, respectively at 2 pm on Wednesday, RJD announced.

It will be a simple ceremony to be held inside Raj Bhavan. More ministers will be inducted into the cabinet at a later stage, sources in Kumar’s JD(U) and Yadav’s RJD told PTI.

Kumar, who dumped the BJP-led NDA earlier in the day, will be taking oath as the CM for the eighth time. He will be heading a coalition of seven parties which is supported by an Independent.

Nitish Kumar resigned as “NDA’s Chief Minister” to stake claim to form a new government after being declared, unanimously, the leader of the opposition Grand Alliance.

After weeks of simmering tension between the JD(U) and BJP over a host of issues including caste census, population control and the ‘Agnipath’ defence recruitment scheme and a tiff over the continuation of Kumar’s former confidante RCP Singh as a central cabinet minister, Tuesday morning saw all MPs and MLAs of the regional party huddled in conference at the chief minister’s residence.

The decision they took was to quit the NDA and join hands with the Mahagathbandhan which it had spurned five years back in 2017. The CM is understood to have told party legislators and MPs that he had been driven against the wall by the BJP which tried to weaken his JD(U), first by propping up Chirag Paswan’s rebellion and later through the party’s former national president RCP Singh.

Singh was made a cabinet minister at the Centre without Kumar’s explicit agreement. Consequently, when his term as a Rajya Sabha member ended, the JD(U) refused to give him another term as an MP, thus ending his stint as cabinet minister as well.

In the state Assembly, which has an effective strength of 242, requiring 121 MLAs for a majority, the RJD has the highest number of 79 MLAs followed by the BJP (77) and the JD(U) with 44.

The JD(U) also enjoys the support of four MLAs of former Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha and an Independent. The Congress has 19 MLAs while the CPIML(L) has 12 and CPI and CPI(M) have two each. Besides, one MLA belongs to Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM.