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 were sworn in as Ministers at a ceremony held at the Gandhi Maidan on Thursday (May 7, 2026).

Altogether, 32 Ministers drawn from all constituents of the five-party National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the State were administered the oath of office by Governor Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Syed Ata Hasnain.

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 Mr. 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 of Bihar, ending Nitish Kumar’s 21-year tenure at the helm of the State.

Bihar’s new Cabinet

Most of the new inductees had been part of the Nitish Kumar Cabinet formed in November last year, after the NDA returned to power in the Assembly elections.

Those sworn in as Ministers included 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 full list of ministers newly inducted into the Bihar government with their respective portfolios is as follows:

Chief Minister: Samrat Choudhary (BJP): home, vigilance, cabinet secretariat, election, civil aviation and “all other departments not allocated to anybody else”.

Deputy Chief Ministers:

Vijay Kumar Choudhary (JD-U): Water resources and parliamentary affairs

Bijendra Prasad Yadav (JD-U): Finance 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 and geology and 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 & animal resources

Ramchandra Prasad: Environment, forest and climate Change

Arun Shankar Prasad: Labour resources and youth, employment and skill development

Shreyasi Singh: Sports and industry

JD(U)

Nishant Kumar: Health

Shrawon Kumar: Rural development and information and public relations department

Madan Sahni: Prohibition

Leshi Singh: Building construction

Shweta Gupta: Social welfare

Bhagwan Singh Kushwaha: Planning & development

Damodar Rawat: Transport

Bulo Mandal: Power

Sunil Kumar: Rural works

Sheila Mandal: Science, technology and technical education

Ratnesh Sada: Disaster management

Jama Khan: Minority affairs

Ashok Choudhary: Food and consumer affairs

Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas)

Sanjay Kumar Paswan: Sugarcane

Sanjay Kumar Singh: Public health engineering department

Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular)

Santosh Kumar Suman: Minor water resources and irrigation

Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM)

Deepak Prakash: Panchayati Raj