Nand Kishore Yadav Likely to Become New Bihar Assembly Speaker

Nand Kishore Yadav

(Image: Kamran Akhter/The Quint)

Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislator Nand Kishore Yadav is likely to be the Bihar Assembly speaker after Janata Dal (United) (JDU) member Speaker Vijay Kumar Chaudhary was chosen to join Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Cabinet.

Chaudhary was the Speaker in the outgoing Assembly.

This is the first time a BJP leader will be becoming a speaker in the Bihar Assembly in over a decade.

Yadav has served as a minister in all the previous NDA governments in Bihar. He was the minister for the Road Construction Department in the last government.

Yadav also served as the leader of the Opposition in the Bihar Assembly before the BJP-JD(U) split in 2013.

He defeated Pravin Singh of the Congress by over 18,000 votes to win the Patna Sahib seat for the seventh time. Janata Dal (United) chief Nitish Kumar was on Monday, 16 November, sworn in as the chief minister of Bihar for his fourth straight term and his seventh overall, and Renu Devi and Tarkishore Prasad were chosen to be the deputy CMs.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) emerged victorious in the Bihar elections by defeating the RJD-led Mahagathbandhan. The BJP alone won 74 seats, while the Janata Dal (United) managed to grab just 43 seats.