In a significant move to expand the Samrat Choudhary-led government in Bihar, JD(U) supremo Nitish Kumar’s son Nishant Kumar and 31 others took oath as ministers at a ceremony held at Gandhi Maidan on Thursday (May 7, 2026).
In all, Governor Lieutenant General (retd) Syed Ata Hasnain administered oath to 32 ministers selected from across the five-party National Democratic Alliance (NDA) constituencies in the state.
BJP-led government in Bihar
The BJP-led government was formed last month after JD(U) national president Nitish Kumar resigned as Chief Minister following his election to the Rajya Sabha. He was succeeded by Choudhary, the first Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader to head a government in Bihar.
Samrat Choudhary was sworn in as the first BJP Chief Minister in Bihar, ending Nitish Kumar’s 21-year tenure at the helm of the State.
The new Bihar cabinet
Most of the new members had been part of Nitish Kumar’s Cabinet formed in November last year after the NDA returned to power in the Assembly elections.
Among those sworn in as ministers were Nishant Kumar, Shrawon Kumar, Vijay Kumar Sinha, Dilip Kumar Jaiswal, Leshi Singh, Ram Kripal Yadav, Nitish Mishra, Damodar Rawat, Sanjay Singh (Tiger) and Ashok Choudhary.
The JD(U) has a total of 15 ministers in the Council of Ministers, including Vijay Kumar Choudhary and Bijendra Prasad Yadav as deputy chief ministers.
Sanjay Kumar Singh and Sanjay Kumar Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), led by Union Minister Chirag Paswan, were also inducted into the Cabinet. Santosh Kumar Suman and Deepak Prakash, sons of Union ministers Jitan Ram Manjhi of the Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) and Upendra Kushwaha of the Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM), respectively, were among those who returned to the government.
The complete list of newly joined ministers in the Bihar government with their respective portfolios is as follows:
Chief Minister: Samrat Choudhary (BJP): Home, Vigilance, Cabinet Secretariat, Elections, Civil Aviation and “all other departments which are not assigned to anyone else.”
Deputy Chief Ministers:
Vijay Kumar Choudhary (JD-U): Water Resources and Parliamentary Affairs
Bijendra Prasad Yadav (JD-U): Financial and Commercial Tax
BJP
Ram Kripal Yadav: Cooperation
Kedar Gupta: Tourism
Nitish Mishra: Urban development and housing and information technology
Mithilesh Tiwari: Education
Rama Nishad: Other Backward Classes and Extremely Backward Classes
Vijay Kumar Sinha: Agriculture
Dilip Jaiswal: Revenue and land reforms
Pramod Kumar Chandravanshi: Mining, geology, art and culture
Lakhendra Kumar Raushan (alias) Lakhendra Paswan: SC and ST welfare
Sanjay Singh Tiger: Higher Education and Law
Engineer Kumar Shailendra: Road Construction
Nand Kishore Ram: dairy, fisheries and animal resources
Ramchandra Prasad: Environment, forests and climate change
Arun Shankar Prasad: Youth and Job Resources, Employment and Skill Development
Shreyasi Singh: sports and industry
JD(U)
Nishant Kumar: Cheers
Shrawon Kumar: Department of Rural Development and Information and Public Relations
Madan Sahni: Ban
Leshi Singh: Building Construction
Shweta Gupta: social welfare
Bhagwan Singh Kushwaha: planning and development
Damodar Rawat: Transport
Bulo Mandal: power
Sunil Kumar: Rural Jobs
Sheila Mandal: science, technology and technical education
Ratnesh Sada: Disaster Management
Jama Khan: Minority issues
Ashok Choudhary: Food and consumer affairs
Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas)
Sanjay Kumar Paswan: sugarcane
Sanjay Kumar Singh: Department of Public Health Engineering
Hindustani Awam Morcha (secular)
Santosh Kumar Suman: Minor water resources and irrigation
Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM)
Deepak Prakash: Panchayati Raj
Published – May 7, 2026 03:10 pm IST
