As Bihar CM Samrat Choudhary sought a confidence vote, LJP(RV) state president Raju Tiwari asserted the NDA was well-placed with sufficient numbers (202 MLAs), describing the floor test as a routine constitutional process and a formality.
As the Bihar Assembly witnessed a floor test on Friday, Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) – LJP(RV) state president Raju Tiwari asserted that the ruling NDA was well-placed with sufficient numbers and described the exercise as a routine constitutional process. Speaking to ANI, Tiwari said, “Today is the floor test, this is a process… We have 202 seats… There is no problem. We will all work under the leadership of Samrat Choudhary. Even in the Rajya Sabha elections, you must have seen that the opposition members are not seeing their future under the leadership of their leader…”
Allies, Opposition Weigh In
AIMIM Bihar President Akhtarul Iman, meanwhile, questioned the political situation, saying, “He is the Chief Minister of the NDA, what problem does he have?” RLM MLA Madhav Anand also backed the government, asserting that it has been formed through a democratic process and expressed confidence in securing numbers in the Assembly. “The government has been formed under the leadership of the Chief Minister through a democratic process, and we are confident that with the numbers in our favour, we will easily prove our victory. We had said that we would win all five Rajya Sabha seats, and we proved it by winning… Even today, when voting takes place in the Bihar Assembly, many new things will be seen. Many people will work to support this government,” he told ANI.
NDA’s Comfortable Majority
The floor test comes as newly-appointed Bihar Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary moved to seek a confidence vote in the Assembly on Friday, following his swearing-in after Nitish Kumar resigned from the post of Chief Minister. The process was necessitated after Choudhary took the oath of office following the resignation of Nitish Kumar from the chief ministerial post.
The NDA alliance holds a comfortable majority in the Bihar Assembly with 202 MLAs as opposed to 35 of the RJD-led opposition in the 243-member House. Out of the NDA’s 202 MLAs, the BJP has 89 and JD(U) has 85, comfortably crossing the majority mark required to sustain the government. The alliance is further supported by 19 MLAs of the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), five of the Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) and four of the Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM). The INDIA bloc has only 35 MLAs, including 25 of the RJD, six of the Congress, two of the CPI(ML), one of the CPM and one of the IIP. AIMIM has five MLAs, and the Bahujan Samaj Party has one.
About New CM Samrat Choudhary
Samrat Choudhary is the first BJP CM of Bihar. He comes from a family deeply rooted in politics. His father, Shakuni Choudhary, was a six-time MLA from the Tarapur constituency. His mother, Parvati Devi, won the same seat in 1998 for the now-defunct Samta Party. Samrat Choudhary was appointed as the BJP’s state president in 2023 and later became the Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar in 2024. He took oath to office after the longest-serving Bihar CM Nitish Kumar resigned from the CM post to move to the Rajya Sabha as an MP.
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