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Kushwaha among 12 picked for Legislative Council
PATNA A day after the Bihar Cabinet authorised chief minister Nitish Kumar for shortlisting names for nomination to the state’s Legislative Council, the long pending decision was promptly taken on Wednesday with the announcement of 12 names
PATNA
A day after the Bihar Cabinet authorised chief minister Nitish Kumar for shortlisting names for nomination to the state’s Legislative Council, the long pending decision was promptly taken on Wednesday with the announcement of 12 names. The list has been approved by the Governor’s secretariat and notified in the gazette.
Later in the day, all 12 were sworn in.
Those nominated from the Governor’s quota include two ministers, Ashok Choudhary and Janak Ram, who were not members of any House. Upendra Kushwaha, who recently joined the JD-U, has also been chosen for nomination.
Others picked for nomination include Prof Ram Bachan Rai, Sanjay Kumar Singh, Lalan Kumar Sarraf, Rajendra Prasad Gupta, Sanjay Singh, Devesh Kumar, Pramod Kumar, Ghanshyam Thakur and Nivedita Singh.
Both BJP and JD-U have shared six seats each.
Since the much-delayed Cabinet expansion of the Nitish government ahead of the budget session, all eyes were on the nomination for the 12 seats in the Council, which have been vacant since May 2020.
On Tuesday, Leader of Opposition Tejaswhi Prasad Yadav had even raised the issue of a minister continuing for up to nine months without being a member of any House. He was alluding to building construction minister Ashok Choudhary, who was re-inducted into the new government after his six-month term as a minister expired before the Assembly elections in November last year since he was not a member of any of the two houses.
Former Union minister Shahnawaz Hussain and former BJP MP Janak Ram are also in the cabinet. Ram is not a member of any House and he needed to be nominated to the Upper House. Hussain was elected to the Council earlier.
Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) leader Mukesh Sahni, who is minister of animal husbandry and fisheries, was elected to the Council earlier this year from the BJP seat from the Vidhan Sabha.
The nomination to 12 seats of the Legislative Council was stuck due to lack of agreement on its distribution among the three constituents of the NDA, the BJP, JD-U and the LJP. Now, the new government has got four constituents and the equations have changed.
Bihar is one among only seven states with a bicameral legislature, having both a Lower House (Legislative Assembly) with 243 members and an Upper House (Legislative Council). The council has a strength of 75 members.
BJP, JD-U strike a 50:50 deal
Upper House full
The Council has 75 seats, of which 12 have been lying vacant since May 2020 and have now been filled. Bihar is one among only seven states with an Upper House.
Two ministers
Nominations from the Governor’s quota include two ministers, Ashok Choudhary and Janak Ram, who were not members of any House.
The other 10
Others nominated are Upendra Kushwaha, Prof Ram Bachan Rai, Sanjay Kumar Singh, Lalan Kumar Sarraf, Rajendra Prasad Gupta, Sanjay Singh, Devesh Kumar, Pramod Kumar, Ghanshyam Thakur and Nivedita Singh.
