The Bihar assembly election result has meant that the Janata Dal (United) can no longer continue with its big brother attitude even as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is confident that its numbers will ensure a greater say in the formation of the government.
The BJP won 74 seats in Bihar while Nitish Kumar's JD (U) was restricted to 43 seats, down from 71 in 2015. According to a senior BJP leader, the new cabinet will have more representatives of BJP leaders.
A number of senior party leaders met in Patna on Wednesday to formulate the contours of government formation. A meeting was held later in the day at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi to discuss cabinet formation.
"Within a day or two, the final structure of the cabinet will be decided after consultation with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who will head the government," the senior BJP leader said while quoted by The Print. "The fact that the JD(U) got less numbers would not have any bearing on his chief ministership. This is something that the senior leadership had decided earlier," the BJP leader said.
BJP state president Sanjay Jaiswal while quoted by The Print said that consultations have started. "Since we are an old alliance partner and have been running the government for quite some time with Nitishji, there will be no problem in finalisation of the new cabinet," he said.
According to report, in the last cabinet, the JD(U) had 17 ministers and BJP had 12, including Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi. Although, many of the plum portfolios were with the BJP — Sushil Modi had headed finance and information technology, Prem Kumar was the agriculture minister; Nand Kishore Yadav headed road construction for a long time while revenue and health were with Mangal Pandey.
According to a BJP source, the party will "definitely" try to keep these ministries with them apart from getting some additional berths to accommodate a number of new faces.
