NDA show of strength: Nitish Kumar takes oath as Bihar CM for 10th time, PM Modi attends ceremony

Patna: Nitish Kumar was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Bihar on Thursday, with Governor Arif Mohammad Khan administering the oath of office and secrecy at Patna’s Gandhi Maidan.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who arrived at Patna Airport around 11 a.m., flew directly to the venue by helicopter to attend the ceremony.

Nitish Kumar took oath as Chief Minister for the 10th time at 11:30 a.m. He became Chief Minister for the first time in 2000, though his government lasted for only seven days.

Since returning to power in 2005, he has been sworn in nine consecutive times, reaching a historic tenth oath Thursday.

This is also the first time Prime Minister Narendra Modi has attended Nitish Kumar’s swearing-in ceremony.

Although Nitish Kumar has taken the oath five times since Narendra Modi became Prime Minister in 2014, he has served under both the NDA and the Grand Alliance during this period.

Today marks the first occasion on which PM Modi was present in Patna for his oath-taking.

Samrat Choudhary was sworn in immediately after Nitish Kumar. A victorious MLA from Tarapur, he has now taken charge as one of the Deputy Chief Ministers of Bihar.

Vijay Sinha was sworn in next and has also assumed office as Deputy Chief Minister.

Several ministers were also administered the oath alongside Nitish Kumar, including Vijay Kumar Chaudhary, Mangal Pandey, Dilip Jaiswal, Shravan Kumar, Bijendra Yadav, Lacey Singh, Nitin Naveen, Madan Sahani, Ram Kripal Yadav, Santosh Kumar Suman, Sunil Kumar, Jama Khan, Sanjay Tiger, Arun Shankar Prasad, Rama Nishad, Surendra Mehta, Narayan Prasad, and Ashok Choudhary.

The Prime Minister congratulated all newly sworn-in ministers after the ceremony. The oath-taking ceremony followed a day of intense political activity on Wednesday.

At around 5 p.m., Nitish Kumar visited Raj Bhavan to stake a claim to form the new government.

He submitted letters of support from 202 NDA MLAs and tendered his resignation as the outgoing Chief Minister.

Governor Arif Mohammad Khan subsequently dissolved the 17th Bihar Legislative Assembly and invited him to form the new government.

Earlier, Nitish Kumar was elected leader of the JDU legislative party, while the BJP elected Samrat Choudhary as its legislative party leader and Vijay Sinha as deputy leader.

Both leaders were sworn in today as Deputy Chief Ministers, marking the beginning of the new NDA government in Bihar.

IANS