Nitish retains Home; Samrat Choudhary gets Finance

Patna : Six days after the formation of the NDA government in Bihar, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Saturday distributed portfolios among the cabinet ministers. Nitish Kumar held Home and General Administration, as he has in all his tenures.

He also kept the Education Ministry with JD-U. Education was with RJD in his last stint and the then Education Minister Chandra Shekhar had been making news for wrong reasons.

BJP leader and Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary will be in charge of the Finance Ministry. In the BJP-JD-U alliance, it had been a norm for the BJP to hold Finance. BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Sushil Kumar Modi in his role as Deputy Chief Minister in the erstwhile regimes held Finance. Samrat Choudhary will also hold Urban Development and Housing, Health, Sports, Panchayati Raj, Industry, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries and Law.

Vijay Kumar Sinha, another deputy chief minister from BJP will be in charge of Agriculture, Road Construction, Land Reforms and Revenue, Sugarcane, Mining, Labour Resource, Art, Culture and Youth Affairs, Minor Water Resources and PHED. Vijay Kumar Chaudhary (JD-U) has been given the charge of Education, Water Resource, Parliamentary Affairs, Building construction, Road Transport and Information and Public Relation departments.

Vijendra Yadav, the minister under the JD-U quota will hold energy, planning and development, liquor prohibition, and minority affairs. Prem Kumar (BJP) has been given the charge of co-operative, disaster management, and environment forest and climate change ministry. Shrawan Kumar was given the charge of Rural Development, Social Welfare and Food and Civil Supplies.

Santosh Kumar Suman got charge of IT and SC-ST ministry while Sumit Kumar Singh, the independent MLA was given the post of science and technology and technical education.