Bihar’s chief minister-designate Samrat Chaudhary, who is set to replace the state’s longest-serving chief minister Nitish Kumar after he was elected as the NDA’s legislative party leader on Tuesday, has seen a meteoric rise in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since joining the party nine years ago. The 57-year-old leader, known for his organizational skills and being a team player, will become the first BJP chief minister in the state on Wednesday.
Hailing from the politically influential Queri (Kushwaha) community – a prominent Other Backward Classes (OBC) group in Bihar – Chaudhary entered politics in 1990 as a member of Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal. His father, Shakuni Chaudhary, was a six-time legislator from Tarapur Assembly constituency in Munger district, representing Congress, erstwhile Samata Party and RJD. His mother Parvati won the Tarapur seat in 1998.
Samrat Chowdhury first made headlines in 1999, when he was appointed Agriculture Minister in the government headed by then Prime Minister Rabri Devi. But his ministerial mission did not last long as he was removed from the government after a complaint that he had not completed 25 years of age. Chaudhry was not a member of the Legislative Council at that time.
In 2000, the RJD fielded him in the Assembly elections from Barbata constituency. After his victory, he was reappointed minister and completed his full five-year term.
He remained with the RJD despite the party’s loss in the 2005 Lok Sabha elections. The party rewarded him by appointing him chief whip.
In 2014, Chaudhary broke away from the RJD and joined the Janata Dal (United)-led government headed by Jitan Ram Manjhi and served as Urban Development Minister. When Manjhi stepped down after Nitish Kumar decided to return as chief minister, Chaudhary also lost his ministerial post.
The most recent and perhaps most significant shift came in 2017, when he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party – a party in which he rose to become the state’s vice president after just one year. When Nitish Kumar severed ties with the NDA, Chaudhary was seen as a strong critic of the supreme JD(U). During that period, he always appeared in public wearing a turban (muritha) on his head – the headgear was seen as his pledge to oust Nitish Kumar from power.
In 2023, Chaudhary was appointed state BJP president. After Kumar returned to the NDA in 2024, Chaudhary was appointed Deputy Prime Minister.
His rise took another leap after the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections, which were swept by the BJP-led NDA. Chaudhary, who won from his family’s stronghold of Tarapur, not only retained the deputy chief minister’s post but also got the additional responsibility of the home portfolio, a department Nitish Kumar has always kept to himself since 2005.
Many political observers contend that Chaudhary, by virtue of being queer, a strong OBC community, was a good fit for the BJP which was trying to expand its base in Bihar.
“Samrat Chaudhary is the face of the OBC and a formidable leader of the Kushwahas. This is one of the key factors on which the BJP has bet big in the hope of expanding its caste base from the OBCs as well as the Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs), who have so far remained allied with the JD(U),” said DM Diwakar, senior political analyst and former director of the AN Sinha Institute of Social Sciences, Patna. “Chaudhary’s ability to act as a team man seems to have helped him become the consensus prime ministerial candidate of the NDA with the approval of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar himself.”
Leaders in both the NDA and the Opposition acknowledge that Chaudhary understands the nuances of Bihar politics, even though he has not come to the forefront of any major movement unlike other senior leaders like Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar.
“Samrat has the ability to make his presence felt and was in the right place at the right time. This is essential for politics,” said a senior leader of the National Democratic Alliance Party, who requested anonymity.
Chaudhry’s trip was not without controversy. In the run-up to the Assembly elections last year, Jan Suraj Party founder Prashant Kishor had raised issues like discrepancies in his age as stated in various election affidavits and his alleged involvement in criminal cases. Kishor accused him of faking his age to get bail in the 1995 grenade attack case that killed Congress candidate Satchidanand Singh and his associates. But Chaudhry clarified that no formal charges were brought against him in this case.
Taking over from its longest-serving chief minister, Chaudhary aims to turn Bihar into a BJP stronghold, while accommodating allies like the JD(U), Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), HAM(S) and smaller allies.
Chaudhary’s influence and growing stature in the party can be summed up by the announcement made by Union Home Minister Amit Shah while conducting vote counting in Tarapur constituency ahead of the Assembly elections. Shah had urged people to vote for Chaudhry, promising that he would become a “big man”. Months later, this promise was fulfilled.
