Bihar election results were announced just a few days ago, and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) registered a landslide victory. Now, the point drawing attention is that despite having only four MLAs in the Bihar Assembly, the Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM), led by Rajya Sabha MP Upendra Kushwaha, has been allotted a ministry with a substantially higher budget compared to other NDA allies such as Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) and Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM).
While the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Janata Dal (United) [JD(U)] kept the majority of high-budget Ministries, the LJP-RV, HAM, and RLM have received four state departments. However, according to an IANS report, in terms of budget strength, the RLM stands ahead of both LJP-RV and HAM, even though it has the fewest MLAs among them.
Seats Won By Each Party In Bihar Elections
BJP - 89
JD(U) - 85
RJD - 25
LJP-RV - 19
Congress - 6
AIMIM - 5
HAM - 5
RLM- 5
CPI-ML - 2
IIP- 1
CPI-M - 1
BSP - 1
Total Seats- 243
RLM Gets Panchayati Raj Department - A Comparison
Deepak Prakash of RLM, who is neither an MLA nor an MLC, has been inducted into the Bihar Cabinet and given charge of the Panchayati Raj Department. It is a Ministry with one of the largest budgets among smaller alliance partners.
The Panchayati Raj Department reportedly has an annual budget for the Financial Year 2025-26 is Rs. 11,302.52 crore. Compared to this, the Sugarcane Industry Department, led by LJP-RV's Sanjay Kumar, has an annual budget of only Rs 192.23 crore. The Public Health Engineering Department, led by LJP-RV’s Sanjay Kumar Singh, has an annual budget of Rs 2,702.63 crore.
Minor Water Resources Department, led by HAM's Santosh Kumar Suman, has an annual budget of Rs. 1,839.11 crore.
This would mean that the budget for Deepak Prakash's department is nearly six times larger than that of Santosh Suman's department. It is about three-and-a-half times larger than the combined budgets of the LJP-RV's departments.
(with IANS inputs)
