Bihar Cabinet: CM Nitish Kumar hands over home department to BJP's Samrat Chaudhary; who got what

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has allocated portfolios to his coalition cabinet, a day after being sworn in for a record tenth term.

The saffron party, now the single largest party with 89 seats, secured the largest share of ministries. Samrat Chaudhary has taken charge of the Home Department, while Vijay Kumar Sinha will oversee Land and Revenue as well as Mines and Geology. Mangal Pandey has been assigned Health and Law, and Dilip Jaiswal returns to head the Industries Department. Nitin Naveen will handle Road Construction along with Urban Development and Housing.

Bihar cabinet: Major portfolios

• Health and Law: Mangal Pandey
• Road Construction; Urban Development and Housing: Nitin Naveen
• Agriculture: Ramkripal Yadav
• Tourism; Art, Culture and Youth: Arun Shankar Prasad
• Information and Public Relations; Sports: Shreyasi Singh
• Industries: Dilip Jaiswal
• Labour Resources: Sanjay Tiger
• Animal and Fisheries Resources: Surendra Mehta
• Disaster Management: Narayan Prasad
• SC/ST Welfare: Lakhendra Paswan
• Backward and Extremely Backward Class Welfare: Rama Nipat
• Cooperation; Environment, Forest and Climate Change: Pramod Chandra Banshi

The reshuffle follows a grand swearing-in ceremony at Patna’s Gandhi Maidan, attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, senior NDA leaders and chief ministers of several NDA-ruled states. Nitish Kumar, at 74, returned to office with 26 ministers—eight from JD(U), two from Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), and one each from Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) and Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM).


Smaller allies have also been accommodated. LJP(R) has secured the Sugarcane Industry and Public Health Engineering departments, HAM has been allotted Minor Water Resources, and RLM has taken charge of Panchayati Raj.

(With inputs from agencies)