Patna, July 29: Chief minister Nitish Kumar and the BJP today fell back on the old "tried and tested" team as the full NDA cabinet was sworn in, although a few new faces were also inducted.
Government formation in Bihar is always about balancing caste and region. However, the cabinet expansion failed on the gender balance front with only one woman - Manju Verma of the JDU - included in the lot.
In the previous JDU-BJP cabinets, there were three to four women ministers. "But during that time, we had so many options like seasoned BJP legislator Sukhda Pandey," said a BJP leader, justifying the absence of more women in the cabinet.
However, both the JDU and the BJP did maintain their caste balance by ensuring that upper castes, Other Backward Classes, Extremely Backward Classes and Dalits got proper representation.
Muslim representation fell short, as the BJP does not have a single MLA who belongs to the community. Although the JDU has five, Nitish preferred to continue with Khurshid Alam, who was the sugarcane minister in the Grand Alliance government.
Old stalwarts such as Bijendra Prasad Yadav, Nand Kishore Yadav and Prem Kumar, who held key portfolios in earlier BJP-JDU dispensations, found themselves back on the saddle. Loyalty pays was the message of the JDU, as it included all its ministers who were in the Grand Alliance cabinet.
Nitish's troubleshooter Shrawan Kumar and close aide and adviser Lalan Singh are both back. The only new faces were of Dinesh Chandra Yadav, who has had three stints in Parliament and was a minister in the NDA's first tenure in the state. Ramesh Rishidev, a first-time MLA, also found a berth because the JDU needed someone to represent the politically vibrant Madhepura.
The BJP, naturally, threw up new faces because former ministers in the Nitish cabinet had either lost in the 2015 Assembly elections or like Giriraj Singh and Ashwini Kumar Choubey have gone to Parliament.
The new faces of the BJP who have become ministers are Vinod Narayan Jha from Mithilanchal, Pramod Kumar, who hails from Motihari, businessman and MLA from Muzaffarpur Suresh Sharma, MLA from Lakhisarai and a qualified engineer Vijay Kumar Sinha, Rana Randhir Singh, a first-timer MLA and the son of former minister in the Rabri Devi cabinet Sitaram Singh,Binod Singh, a third-time legislator who hails from Katihar, K.K. Rishi, the Dalit face of the BJP in Purnea, and Braj Kishore Bind, who hails from the EBC community in Rohtas district.
Former state BJP president Mangal Pandey could take oath only late evening. He is also the Himachal Pradesh in-charge of the BJP and was in Shimla, when he heard that the swearing-in ceremony was on Saturday. He was delayed on hios way back.
Pandey has got the the important portfolio of health, which was earlier held by Lalu's eldest son, Tej Pratap Yadav.
LJP leader Pashupati Kumar Paras returned as a Bihar minister after two decades. Known as the shadow of his elder bother and Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan, he is yet to become a member of a legislative House and the immediate problem of the NDA would be to adjust him in either the Assembly or the Council within six months.
