Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has thrown a spanner in the much overdue cabinet expansion by objecting to a couple of names suggested by partner BJP to be sworn in as ministers and refusing to meet its state in-charge Bhupender Yadav over the issue.
This has left ally BJP wringing its hands and mulling about its future course of action.
“Our party sent some names to Nitish to be included in the cabinet of ministers, but he objected to a few of them, and asked to replace them with others. This is not the way things are done in an alliance. We do not interfere in the affairs of the Janata Dal United (JDU) and do not want it to interfere in ours,” a senior BJP leader told The Telegraph on the condition of anonymity.
As the situation unfolded, Bhupender landed in Patna on Tuesday to meet Nitish and resolve the issue. However, he was not given an appointment.
“Our party’s Bihar in-charge (Bhupender Yadav) tried meet Nitish to discuss his objections on some of the names proposed for a place in the cabinet, but the latter did not give him time. Avoiding our senior leaders is against the spirit of the coalition,” the senior BJP leader added.
With the cabinet expansion going into a deadlock, the BJP leaders are going to fall back on Union home minister Amit Shah to rescue the situation.
“Where has been the delay? Everything (cabinet expansion) will happen on time,” BJP’s Bihar unit president Sanjay Jaiswal told mediapersons on Wednesday, but could not give any timeframe for it.
On the other hand, Nitish has always held the BJP responsible for the delay in cabinet expansion.
However, the cabinet expansion has been due in the state for the last two-and-a-half months since the new government was formed on November 16 last year following the Assembly elections. At present there are 14 ministers, including the chief minister, in the cabinet. Several of them have been given the charge of four to six departments, bringing development work and decision-making to a virtual halt. The state can have 36 ministers.
Sources in the BJP said that the names which Nitish objected to include former ministers Samrat Chaudhary and Nitish Mishra, among others. Both of them were associated with the JDU till a few years ago, but had left it subsequently to join the BJP.
In fact, Nitish is said to have chosen to make his party MLA Mewalal Choudhary a minister in an attempt to stymie the chances of Samrat as both hail from the Khagaria area and are from the same Kushwaha caste.
Among the other reasons behind the deadlock in cabinet expansion has been that the BJP, which is now the bigger partner in the alliance with 74 seats, wanted more ministers than the JDU that won 43 seats. But the JDU wanted that the two allies should have an equal number of ministers.
Moreover, the JDU is not in a mood to forget and forgive Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) chief Chirag Paswan’s concerted move during the Assembly polls to harm its prospects. The JDU holds the BJP responsible for it and wants to be compensated by having more ministers than its strength.
