Amid the growing speculation over a rift between the two ruling alliance parties of Bihar — the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) — Chief Minister Nitish Kumar late on Saturday night changed the portfolios of three of his Cabinet colleagues from the RJD, including Education Minister Chandrashekhar, who has been generating controversy over his comment on the Ram temple, and for sparring with the Department Secretary.
The notification released by the government said there had been an amendment in the portfolios of Ministers Alok Mehta, Chandrashekhar, and Lalit Yadav. All three Ministers are from the JD(U)‘s alliance partner, the RJD. Mr. Mehta was Minister of Revenue and Land Reforms, Mr. Chandrashekhar was Education Minister, and Mr. Lalit Yadav was Minister for the Public Health Engineering Department.
According to the new notification issued by the Chief Secretary Amir Subhani, Mr. Mehta has been given charge of the Education Department, Mr. Chandrashekhar is the new Sugarcane Industry Minister, while Mr. Lalit Yadav has been made Revenue and Land Reforms Minister with additional charge of the Public Health Engineering Department.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Kumar had rejigged his party’s team with 21 national member office-bearers. On January 19, RJD chief Lalu Prasad and his younger son and Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav, held a 45-minute closed door meeting with Mr. Kumar at his official residence, 1, Anne Marg, amid speculation that Mr. Kumar may take a political turnaround once again but later, Mr. Tejashwi Yadav, while speaking to media persons, made it clear that the alliance between the JD(U) and RJD was strong, and all was well in the government.
However, the rift between Mr. Chandrashekhar and the Education Department’s Secretary K.K. Pathak has been going for over a month over some departmental issues, and the Minister had stopped coming to his department for a long time. Mr. Pathak too went on leave amid speculation that he had resigned from the post, but a few days ago, he had a meeting with top State officials and was said to be agreeable to joining duty on “certain assurances”. Sources among the State officials told The Hindu that Mr. Pathak agreed to join duty only after being assured that something significant would happened in his department soon. Mr. Chandrasekhar’s portfolio was changed on Saturday night.
Mr. Chandrashekhar has been generating controversy for several months with his comments. Two weeks ago, he had said that “temples are a path to mental slavery”, and earlier, he had courted controversy by comparing the Hindu epic Ramcharitmanas to “cyanide”. Some months ago, the Minister’s office had shot off a letter to Mr. Pathak, questioning the latter’s style of functioning.
