PATNA: When the 17 Legislative Assembly of Bihar will meet for its inaugural session on November 23, there will be no minority members, especially Muslim community, in the treasury banks.
It is for the first time in the post-independence history of Bihar’s legislative assembly that no minister from the Muslim community would be among the cabinet ministers.
All the previous cabinets in Bihar, from those headed by the first CM Shri Krishna Sinha to the last one headed by Nitish kumar he himself had at least one or more ministers from the Muslim community, veterans recall.
In addition, the three previous coalition governments of the BJP-JD (U) headed by Nitish also had representation from the Muslim community. Khurshid aka Firoz Ahmad of JD (U) was the minority welfare minister in Nitish’s last cabinet. But Khurshid lost the recently concluded assembly elections from his seat in Sikta.
Some high-ranking JD (U) leaders believe that CM Nitish Kumar did not appoint any minister from the Muslim community this time mainly because not a single MLA from the minority community won the assembly election of any of the four allies of the NDA: JD (U), BJP, HAM (S) and VIP, although they have 125 MLAs in the 243-member House.
Neither BJP nor HAM (S) from Jitan ram manjhi or the VIP led by Mukesh Sahani had put forward any Muslim candidate in the recently concluded elections. Although JD (U) presented 11 Muslims among his 115 candidates, they all lost the election. Of the 11 JD (U) candidates, six ran in the Muslim-dominated Seemanchal region, where Asaduddin Owai’s AIMIM won five seats.
Furthermore, the number of Muslim MLAs in the new assembly has been reduced to 19 from 24 in the 16th House established in 2015. “Linguistic minorities, including Muslims, have about 18% of the population in the state. Muslims alone have about 17% of the population. It is very regrettable that they do not have representation in the new cabinet headed by Nitish ji, ”Congress spokesman Harkhu Jha told TOI.
When contacted, JD (U) minority cell state chairman Tanweer Akhtar said successive Nitish-led governments did much for the overall development and progress of the Muslim community in the past 15 years. “But the Muslim community did not support even the 11 candidates from their community presented by Nitish Ji. The Muslim community did not do justice to the JD (U). Now, I am not in a position to ask Nitish Ji to pay special attention to the cause of the Muslim community. Muslims themselves have created such a situation that today they have no representation in the cabinet, ”Akhtar told TOI on Tuesday.
On video: Bihar cabinet: Nitish Kumar assigns wallets, holds house
.
