BJP leader Samrat Choudhary was sworn in as the chief minister of Bihar on Wednesday, the first from the saffron party to hold the post.
Governor Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain (retd) administered the oath of office and secrecy to Choudhry as chief minister and to JD(U)’s Vijay Kumar Choudhary and Bijendra Prasad Yadav as members of the Council of Ministers at the Lok Bhawan here.
Top leaders of the ruling NDA in Bihar, which comprises the BJP, JD(U) and three other parties, attended the ceremony. They included Union Ministers J P Nadda and Chirag Paswan, Nitish Kumar, and all NDA MLAs.
Nitish Kumar, who is now a Rajya Sabha MP, relinquished the chief minister’s post on Tuesday, dissolving his cabinet in which Choudhary was a deputy chief minister and held the crucial home portfolio.
Choudhary, who joined the BJP in 2017, was named the legislative party leader on Tuesday in the presence of top functionaries like BJP chief Nitin Nabin and Union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, whom the parliamentary board had named as “central observer” for the transition.
First BJP CM in Bihar
Samrat Choudhary will be the Bharatiya Janata Party’s first chief minister in Bihar. He represents the Tarapur constituency. The decision was taken earlier in the day at a meeting in Patna, attended by members of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
The BJP, the single largest party in the 243-strong assembly with 89 MLAs, has elected Choudhary as its legislature party. Union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, whom the BJP parliamentary board named central observer for the legislature party leader’s election, told reporters, “Samrat Chaudhary was unanimously elected as the BJP’s legislature party leader.”
(With inputs).
