Barring 3, all ministers richer than Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar

Patna: Nitish Kumar is serving as Chief Minister of Bihar for the last 20 years. Prior to this he was a Union Minister in Vajpayee and VP Singh regime handling Railways, Agriculture and Roads & Surface Transport portfolios.

Before becoming an MP, Union Minister and the CM, he was elected as an MLA in 1985. But Nitish, in all these 40 years in public life, has a savings of merely 1.65 crore, which includes his flat at Dwarka in New Delhi.

Relatively, his Cabinet colleague and Rural Works Minister Ashok Choudhary, who became a minister for the first time in 2000, is the richest one with an asset of Rs 42.68 crore. This includes the assets owned by his wife.

Mandatory declaration of assets

The Nitish regime in Bihar has made it mandatory for every minister to declare his/her assets on the last day of the calendar year. In view of this directive, all the 25 ministers in Bihar disclosed their assets on December 31, which were uploaded by the Cabinet Secretariat Department on the government websites.

Nitish’s other Cabinet colleague Rama Nishad, a first time Minister, who is in-charge of Welfare Department, is the second richest one with an asset of Rs 31.85 crore. This includes the assets of her husband too.

The poorest among the lot is Sanjay Kumar, Sugarcane Industries Minister with an asset of merely Rs 23.85 lakh while Labour Resources Minister Sanjay Tiger (Rs 32.61 lakh) and Animal Husbandry minister Surendra Mehta (Rs 97.64 lakh) are the three ministers poorer than Nitish Kumar.

Rest all the ministers are richer than the Bihar Chief Minister. This includes the youngest one Shreyasi Singh, daughter of former Union Minister late Digvijay Singh, who is Sports and IT minister in Bihar.

She has an asset worth Rs 7.62 crore. This includes her moveable asset worth Rs 1.53 crore. Bihar’s Deputy CM Samrat Choudhary has an asset worth 6.38 crore, while the other Dy CM Vijay Sinha has Rs 8.81 crore worth assets.