Bihar's Nitish-Tejashwi 2.0 cabinet expansion likely on August 16: Reports

Nitish Kumar on Friday took oath as the Chief Minister of Bihar for the 8th time with RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav as his deputy.

Photo credit: IANS

Patna: The new Bihar cabinet expansion of the Nitish Kumar-Tejashwi Yadav government is likely to take place on August 16, ANI reported quoting sources. This comes after Bihar witnessed one of the most turbulent power play between the BJP and JD(U) alliance government. Nitish Kumar, the RJD chief and Bihar’s Chief Minister broke off the ties with long-time ally BJP after the lingering stiff between them came to a head. Kumar on Friday took oath as the Chief Minister of Bihar for the 8th time with RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav as his deputy, a day after he resigned from the post leading to a dissolution of the cabinet with BJP leaders.

Meanwhile, the blame game between JDU and BJP is on with either side accusing the other of foul play.

The BJP’s stance is that Nitish Kumar is eyeing the Prime Minister’s post ahead of the 2024 General Elections and that the hunger for power made him walk away from the alliance with their party.

On the other hand, the JDU has accused BJP of the foul play and trying to manufacture an ‘Eknath Shinde’ kind of situation in Bihar by turning their backs on the party and planning a government change.

Bihar’s new cabinet

While there is still no official word on the new JDU-RJD cabinet according to media reports, both Kumar and Yadav have worked on the outlines of their new arrangement.

As per the reports, there will be 18 ministers in the cabinet with 9 from JDU and 9 from RJD. Tejashwi Yadav has demanded the Home Ministry and elucidated that the Assembly speaker is elected from his party.

JD(U) and RJD alliance break up

In 2017, the grand alliance of RJD, JDU and Congress won the mandate and formed an elected government with Tejashwi Yadav and his brother Tej Pratap Yadav as ministers but the partnership didn’t go very well.

Two years later, Nitish Kumar switched sides and joined hands with BJP again after accusing the Yadav brothers of corruption.

Now, in 2022, the RJD and JDU alliance comes back together.