BJP leader Samrat Choudhary salutes after being sworn in as a minister at Raj Bhavan in Patna on January 28, 2024. | Photo credit: PTI
Samrat Choudhary, the BJP’s Other Backward Class (OBC) leader in Bihar, where the party wants to overcome its “upper caste” image, has seen a meteoric rise since joining the group nearly seven years ago.
Mr. Choudhary was elected leader of the BJP legislature party on Sunday and with the promotion, he is likely to become one of the two deputy chief ministers in the new NDA government led by Nitish Kumar.
His father, Shakuni Choudhary, was an army man-turned-politician who started out in the Congress and often switched allegiances between arch-rivals Lalu Prasad of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Nitish Kumar of the Janata Dal-United (JD-U).
Mr. Samrat Choudhary was a minister in the government led by Rabri Devi, wife of the RJD supremo, and remained with the party for some time after it was ousted from power in 2005.
In 2014, he became part of a rebel faction and joined the JD(U) government headed by Jitan Ram Manjhi, who took over after Mr Kumar stepped down.
Three years later, he became disillusioned with the JD(U) and joined the BJP, which recognized his potential both as a fiery orator and as a leader belonging to the prominent Koeri caste.
Mr. Choudhary became the Vice-President of the State Unit and was later honored as a member of the Legislative Council. He became a minister in Mr. Kumar’s government after the NDA won the 2020 assembly elections.
He was appointed BJP state president in March 2023 when he replaced Lok Sabha MP Sanjay Jaiswal and drew Rabri Devi’s mocking remark “Baniya se dil bhar gaya to Mahto ko bana diya”.
Mr Choudhary, known as a vocal critic of Mr Kumar, started wearing the turban after the JD(U) supremo ditched the BJP last year and vowed to take it off only after his party returned to power.
He now faces the uphill task of making peace with his former bete noire and ensuring that the ‘Luv Kush’, a colloquial term for Kurmis (Mr Kumar’s caste) and Koeris in Bihar, remains strong and boosts the prospects of the BJP-led coalition in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections and beyond.
Mr Kumar resigned as chief minister of Bihar, saying “things are not working well” for him in the Mahagathbandhan and the INDIA opposition bloc, betting on forming a new government with the BJP, which he ousted less than 18 months ago.
Mr. Choudhary and Vijay Kumar Sinha, who was elected as an MP from the BJP legislature party, are likely to be Mr. Kumar’s deputy CMs in the new state government.
Published – 28 Jan 2024 22:02 IST
