Post-split Nitish is the most ‘burdened’ CM of country

Patna,(BiharTimes): With no plan to expand cabinet in the near future, Nitish Kumar, has become the chief minister with highest number of portfolios with him. He has been looking after all the 11 important portfolios, such as finance, health, tourism, cooperative, animal husbandry and fisheries, art and culture, road construction etc, which were held by the BJP ministers till June 16 last.

Since tussle have started among JD (U) ministers and legislators over the allocation of portfolios Nitish Kumar is in no hurry to expand his cabinet. He has already secured trust vote on June 19.

Nitish Kumar at present looks after 18 departments. At present his cabinet has 17 more ministers.
Of all the opposition parties it is the BJP, which is criticizing the administrative inefficiency of the government. The party leaders have repeatedly alleged that there is nobody to look after so many departments and files are piling up in Secretariat. 

According to the party’s national spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain, the delay in expansion of the cabinet shows that Nitish has no trust in his own ministers and legislators. He said it is not humanly possible to handle so much workload.

The BJP leaders are now stating that chief minister is in charge of the home department and everyone can see how the police are behaving. It first opened fire on tribals in Bagaha and now a custodial death in Bhagalpur and Nawada. Three persons were killed in Buxar and two builders shot dead in Patna in matter of a few hours and the state government machinery is unable to do anything. 

Senior bureaucrats of the state concede that the pace of work has slowed down considerably. 

However, Vijay Kumar Chaudhary, a senior minister in the cabinet disagreed. He cited the example of the first Lalu Yadav cabinet of 1990 when it had only 11 ministers and that too during the undivided Bihar. It was much later that for political reason the then CM was forced to expand his cabinet. 

Chaudhary said he failed to understand why so much hue and cry is being raised by the BJP leaders.