Nitish Kumar expands his cabinet, inducts 21 ministers

The Nitish Kumar-led Bihar government expanded the cabinet on Friday by inducting 21 ministers, 12 from the BJP and nine from the JD (U), taking the total number of ministers including the chief minister to 30.

Bihar governor Rajendra Arlekar administered the oath of office to the new ministers.

After the expansion, which took place after weeks of discussions among the allies, there are 15 ministers in the cabinet from the BJP, 13 from the JD (U), one from the Hindustani Awam Morcha and one independent. The composition is similar to the NDA government in 2020.


The BJP inducted six new faces among its 12 ministers. Former deputy CM Renu Devi was among those who took oath as minister. Apart from her, Mangal Pandey, Neeraj Singh Bablu, Nitin Navin, Janak Ram and Nitish Mishra took oath as ministers. Among the freshers are Santosh Singh, Kedar Gupta, Surendra Mehta, Hari Sahni, Krishna Nandan Paswan and Dilip Jaiswal.

From the JD (U), all erstwhile ministers have been repeated. Jama Khan is the lone Muslim face in the cabinet. Out of the 21 ministers who took oath on Friday, six each are from upper castes and Scheduled Castes, four each from backward and extremely backward castes and one from the minority community.