Patna, June 27: The Bihar chief minister is even more burdened than the Prime Minister.

Manmohan Singh has to deal with four ministries besides his prime ministerial responsibilities.

Nitish Kumar is saddled with 18 departments. Besides him, the cabinet at present has 17 members.

The chief minister held additional charge of five departments prior to the dismissal of the 11 BJP ministers on June 16. Thanks to the dismissal and delay in cabinet expansion, Nitish has been forced to handle the additional load.

This has given the BJP, all of whose axed ministers’ departments are now with Nitish, a stick to beat the chief minister with.

“The delay in expansion of the cabinet and the chief minister’s failure to allocate the departments to existing ministers somehow shows that he has no trust in his own party members. How can anyone otherwise explain such a situation?” BJP national spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain told The Telegraph over phone from Bhagalpur.

Though Hussain does not doubt the ability of Nitish, he is of the opinion that it was not humanly possible to handle so much workload. “After all he is a human being with certain limitations,” he said.

The BJP leader cited examples to substantiate his stand. “The chief minister is in charge of the home department and everyone can see how the police are behaving. It first opened fire on people in Bagaha and now a custodial death in Bhagalpur has taken place,” he said. (See Page 6)

Several senior bureaucrats of the state too feel that the pace of work has slowed down post the JD(U)–BJP split.

“It is but natural. The presence of a minister does help in expediting policy-related things and decision-making process. Now all major departmental files, which are under the chief minister, would have to be cleared by the CM’s secretariat and a delay is inevitable,” a senior bureaucrat, who did not wish to be named, said.

Another senior state government official said the transfer of field officials of several departments were to be effected in June but the recent political developments have led to their postponement.

His remark does not appear to be off the mark as one of the officials in the animal and fish resources department, who was expecting a transfer this June out of Patna since he has been posted in the state capital for more than three years, is more than happy for what has happened in Bihar on the political front.

“Our department is now being headed by the chief minister and I don’t think he would do much as far as departmental transfers are concerned,” he said.

Nitish’s cabinet colleague Vijay Kumar Chaudhary, however, defended him strongly when his attention was drawn to his “overburdened” boss.

“There are examples from the past when the state government had just 12 ministers during the Congress regime for more than a year and that too in undivided Bihar. Even Laluji had a cabinet of around a dozen ministers when he first became chief minister in 1990, again in undivided Bihar. I fail to understand that why such a hue and cry is being made over the cabinet expansion and that too by those who have no stake in this process,” he said.

Chaudhary claimed that normal business of the government had not been affected. “We know our work and the government is doing the needful without any laxity on the work front,” he said.