Nitish Kumar, 2 deputy CMs, 12 other ministers to take oath today; Amit Shah to attend

Patna, Nov 16: JDU chief Nitish Kumar will be taking oath as the Bihar chief minister for his fourth term in office, along with 14 other ministers. BJP's Tarkishore Prasad and Renu Devi, liely deputy chief ministers of Bihar will be among those who take oath at the swearing-in ceremony that will be attended by Home Minister Amit Shah.

According to the reports, BJP, which emerged as big brother in the NDA alliance likely get 20 to 22 seats in the state cabinet. While the JD(U) will likely get around 11 to 12 seats in the new Bihar cabinet. The VIP and HAM will be accommodated with one berth each, say media reports.

The outgoing Bihar government had a total of 30 ministers, including Nitish Kumar and Sushil Modi. Among them 18 were from the JD(U) and the rest 12 from the BJP.

With the BJP emerging as the largest party in the NDA with 74 MLAs and the JD(U)'s tally going down to 43 from 71, it would be interesting to see if the saffron party, which has sacrificed the post of the chief minister in honour of its pre-poll promise, will insist on having a larger share in the cabinet.

A total of 24 ministers of the previous cabinet had contested the polls and 10 of them, both from both the JD(U) and the BJP, lost.

The NDA has secured a majority with 125-seats in the 243-seat strong Bihar Legislative Assembly of which BJP won on 74 seats, JD(U) on 43 while eight seats were won by two other NDA constituents.

The RJD, on the other hand, emerged as the single-largest party with 75 seats while the Congress only won 19 of the 70 seats it had contested on.