Bihar Cabinet portfolios: Nitish keeps Home, deputy Tarkishore gets Finance

New Delhi: A day after taking oath as Bihar's Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar retained the key portfolio of the Home department and General Administration as he allocated portfolios among his Cabinet colleagues on Tuesday.

The other portfolios remaining with the Chief Minister are Cabinet Secretariat and election besides "any other department not allocated among other members of the council of ministers".

Notably, apart from Nitish, most of his colleagues in the previous government have retained all their respective departments.

However, Kumar's first deputy Tarkishore Prasad has been allocated mostly all the departments which were previously held by his predecessor Sushil Kumar Modi such as finance, commercial tax, environment, forestry and climate change along with information technology.

In addition, Prasad will be holding disaster management and urban development portfolios.

Nitish's second deputy Renu Devi will handle the departments of Panchayati Raj, OBC, EBC and industries.

The JD(U)'s Vijay Choudhary will take care of information and public relations department apart from rural engineering, rural development, water resources, etc, while senior BJP leader Mangal Pandey will handle the health ministry. Pandey has also been given the charge of art, culture and youth affairs and road construction department – a 'plum' ministry, so to say.

JD(U)'s state working president Ashok Choudhary has got building construction apart from getting science and technology, social welfare and minorities affairs department and JD(U)'s another key leader Bijendra Prasad Yadav has retained power, prohibition and excise besides getting planning and development and food and consumer protection.

Mewa Lal Chaudhary, who faced corruption charges, has got the education department, while Sheela Kumar has been given transport.

Other BJP ministers are Amarendra Pratap Singh (agriculture, cooperatives and sugarcane industry), Rampreet Paswan (public health engineering), Jibesh Kumar (labour, tourism and mines) and Ram Surat Kumar Rai (revenue, land reforms and law).

Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) founding president Mukesh Sahni has been given animal husbandry and fisheries and Santosh Kumar Suman, son of Jitan Ram Manjhi, has got minor irrigation and SC/ST Welfare.