A petition in the Supreme Court has challenged the re-induction of Deepak Prakash in the Council of Ministers in Bihar on the grounds that he’s not a member of either House of the State Legislature.
Prakash – who is the son of former Union Minister and Rashtriya Lok Morcha leader Upendra Kushwaha — took oath as minister on November 20, 2025 in the government led by the then Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Prakash was neither a member of the State Assembly nor the Legislative Council.
However, Prakash ceased to be a minister when Nitish Kumar submitted the resignation of his Council of Ministers to the Governor on April 15, 2026. He was re-appointed as the Panchayati Raj Minister in the Samrat Choudhary-led government on May 7 after a gap of 222 days – again without being a member of either House of the State Legislature, the PIL submitted.
Petitioner Rakesh Kumar Singh – an activist – cited Article 164(4) of the Constitution which allows a non-legislator to continue as a minister for six consecutive months, during which he must secure the membership of the state legislature.
He submitted that the six-month period to get re-elected from the first appointment on November 20, 2025, expired on May 20, 2026, making him ineligible to continue as a minister.
Maintaining that the exception Article 164(4) of the Constitution was a one-time opportunity which can’t be revived with the change of government, Singh contended that the reappointment of Prakash was a colourable exercise of constitutional power designed to indirectly extend the six-month constitutional grace period available to a non-legislator to serve as a minister.
He urged the court to call upon Prakash to disclose the constitutional authority under which he continued to hold the ministerial office and to declare his re-appointment unconstitutional and void.
Allowing repeated appointments of unelected individuals to ministerial office would undermine the principles of parliamentary democracy, representative government, collective responsibility and electoral accountability, Singh said, adding the continuation of Prakash in the Bihar Council of Ministers went against constitutional morality and the rule of law.
The PIL cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in SR Chaudhury versus State of Punjab (2001) that said an individual can’t bypass the democratic process by resigning just before the six-month period under Article 164(4) ended and get re-appointed to the cabinet repeatedly.
