Himalaya Harbinger, Rudrapur Bureau
Lalan is the former Janata Dal (United) national president and is a senior leader of his party. He is considered a trusted loyalist of chief minister Nitish Kumar and has served as minister in the state government. He is likely to take oath as the Union minister.
Singh, 69, an upper Bhumihar caste, began his political career in 1974. Later, he got associated with the Old Janata Dal Parivar and was among the founding members of the Samata Party led by CM Kumar and former defence minister Geroge Fernandes.
In his long political career, Singh, who is a four-time MP having been elected from Munger, has made his mark as a strategist, a troubleshooter, and a hard negotiator for the JD(U), which has remained in power in Bihar as well as Centre in different coalition governments. Singh has served as water resources minister and planning development minister in the state government.
Last year in December, Singh had stepped down as national president of JD(U), amid speculations that CM Kumar was not happy with him for getting too close to RJD, which was an ally of the JD(U) in the Grand Alliance government that lasted from August 2022 to January 2024. CM Kumar took over as the JD(U)’s national president in December 2023. Later, JD(U) realigned with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Singh fought the 2024 Lok Sabha election as a JD(U) candidate, defeating his nearest rival Anita Devi of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, by a margin of 80,870 votes.
Ram Nath Thakur
Another JD(U) leader, Ram Nath Thakur, 74, is a Rajya Sabha MP and son of former Bihar chief minister Karpoori Thakur. Hailing from Karpoori Gram of Bihar’s Samastipur district, he was a member of the Bihar Legislative Council and became minister of sugarcane industries in RJD leader Lalu Prasad’s first cabinet. He was minister of revenue and land reforms, law, information and public relations from November 2005 to November 2010 during Nitish Kumar’s cabinet. He became a Rajya Sabha MP on April 10, 2014. He is likely to take oath as the cabinet minister in the now PM Modi-led government.
Giriraj Singh
BJP leader and Union minister Giriraj Singh, 71, will take oath as the minister for the third consecutive term. He was elected from Nawada to the 16th Lok Sabha and re-elected to the 17th Lok Sabha from Begusarai, a constituency he retained even in 2024.
Giriraj has served as minister of rural development and panchayat raj department and animal husbandry and fisheries in the Modi 2.0 cabinet. He has also formerly served as minister of cooperative, animal husbandry and fisheries resources development in the NDA coalition government of Bihar.
In the 18th Lok Sabha polls, Giriraj defeated his nearest rival Abdesh Kumar Roy of the Communist Party of India, by a margin of 81,480 votes.
Chirag Paswan
An actor turned politician, Chirag Paswan, 41, president of the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), and a three-time Lok Sabha MP from Bihar, comes to the 18th Lok Sabha with an enviable distinction of having a 100% strike rate for his relatively new political outfit, having won all the five seats it contested during the recently concluded general elections.
He defeated his nearest rival Shiv Chandra Ram of the RJD by a margin of 1.70 lakh votes.
Paswan, who himself won the Hajipur seat, carries the legacy of his father, the late Ram Vilas Paswan, a Dalit leader, eight-time Lok Sabha MP and former Union minister.
Paswan was a two-time Lok Sabha MP (2014 and 2019) earlier from Jamui before he decided this year to contest from Hajipur, his father’s pocket borough, winning the seat with a margin of 1.70 lakh votes over his nearest rival Shiv Chandra Ram of the RJD.
He made a debut in films in 2011 with “Mile Na Mile Hum”, opposite Kangana Ranaut, now a BJP MP from Mandi in Himachal Pradesh. After an unsuccessful career in Bollywood, Paswan learnt the political ropes from his father before deciding to take the political plunge. He has not looked back since.
Nityanand Rai
A Yadav face of BJP in Bihar, Nityanand Rai, 58, started his political career as a student leader in Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and later won MLA election from Hajipur assembly seat four times.
Jitan Ram Manjhi
Hindustani Awam Morcha-Secular (HAM-S) founder and former Bihar chief minister, Jitan Ram Manjhi, 79, is one of the Dalit faces of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in Bihar.
Elected to the state assembly for the first time in 1980 as a Congress MLA, Manjhi has always occupied a prominent position in the state government. A couple of years after entering into electoral politics, he was made a minister in the then Chandrashekhar Singh government in Bihar.
Manjhi was sworn in as the 23rd chief minister in May 2014 after the incumbent chief minister Nitish Kumar stepped down, owning moral responsibility for the defeat of his party in the Lok Sabha elections. However, he was expelled from the Janata Dal (United) [JD(U)] after a confrontation with Kumar.
Rai, who got elected as MP for the third time from Ujiarpur in 2024, served as a minister of state (home) in the second Prime Minister Narendra Modi cabinet from 2019-24 and is considered close to former Union home minister Amit Shah.
The BJP has tried to bet high on Rai by promoting him as a Yadav face in Bihar in a bid to counter RJD’s traditional Yadav vote base and had given him responsibility as state president of the party in 2016.
Later, Manjhi founded HAM-S and projected himself as a Dalit leader. For the first time, he was elected as member of Lok Sabha from Gaya and has been named as a minister of Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government.
Manjhi defeated his nearest rival Kumar Sarvjeet of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) by a margin of 1.10 lakh votes.
President Droupadi Murmu will administer the oath of office and secrecy to Modi and his cabinet ministers at 7:15pm on Sunday, at the Rashtrapati Bhavan’s Forecourt
