Portfolios swapped in Bihar; BJP gets Home Nitish keeps GAD, Vigilance; BJP’s Samrat Choudhary gets Home; JD(U) gets Finance
Elected leaders of the NDA were officially allotted their portfolios on Friday, a day after Nitish Kumar was sworn in as the chief minister for the 10th time.
He has kept the portfolios of the General Administration Department, Cabinet Secretariat and Vigilance with himself.
The Home portfolio of Bihar, which Nitish Kumar kept with himself through nearly 20-year-long tenure, has been given to his deputy, BJP leader Samrat Chowdhury, this time, according to official notification issued on Friday. The Finance portfolio, which has been held by the BJP whenever it has entered into an alliance with the JD(U), has gone to the Nitish Kumar-led party this time. Senior leader Bijendra Prasad Yadav got the Finance and Commercial Tax departments. Another Deputy CM Vijay Kumar Sinha got Revenue & Land reforms and Mines & Geology departments, the notification said.
While senior JD(U) leader Shrowan Kumar has been given portfolios of Rural Development and Transport departments, his party colleague Ashok Chowdhary got the Rural Works department portfolio.
JD(U) leader Vijay Chowdhary has been given the portfolios of Building Construction, Water Resources and Parliamentary Affairs, while Madan Sahni of the same party got the Social Welfare department portfolio, the notification said.
The BJP’s Shreyasi Singh has been given portfolios of Sports and Information and Technology, while her party’s Arun Shankar Prasad got the Tourism department. Sanjay Tiger, also of the BJP, has been given the Labour Resources department, it said. Deepak Prakash of the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party and HAM(S)’s Santosh Suman have been given the portfolios of Panchayati Raj department and Minor Water Resources department, respectively. LJP (RV) MLAs Sanjay Kumar and Sanjay Kumar Singh became Sugarcane and Public Health Engineering Department ministers.
