In the summer of 2022, when Nitish Kumar, in one of his many U-turns, left the BJP and returned to the Rally for Democracy-Congress Mahagathbandhan, the Bihar BJP leader tied a saffron turban as part of his pledge. He said he will not stop wearing it until Nitish Kumar is dethroned. A lot happened between them, but Samrat Chaudhary got his wish four years later, and has now been chosen as the next chief minister of Bihar while Nitish moves to the Rajya Sabha.
Samrat Chaudhary has been chosen by the BJP as its leader and will be sworn in on April 15 as the head of a new BJP-RJD regime in the state where the BJP has never had a chief ministerial position before.
Nitish Kumar, who dominated politics in Bihar for more than two decades, vacated the throne to his deputy on Tuesday. Perhaps Chaudhry did not want to achieve it this way.
From turban to crown
When Nitish Kumar relinquished the BJP-led NDA in August 2022 and the state government fell, the BJP, which had been in power at the Center for more than a decade, was left politically humiliated. Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced that all doors for Nitish were permanently closed while he was going to Mahagathbandhan.
At that moment, Samrat Chaudhary, newly promoted as BJP’s Bihar state unit president, picked up a saffron turban and turned it into his own symbol of defiance.
He wore the turban for 22 months, and took it off frequently before Nitish finally left the chair this week.
In January 2024, Nitish Kumar again abandoned Mahagathbandhan and rejoined the NDA. It was his fifth time in a decade, and the ninth time he had been sworn in as president. Samrat Chaudhary, along with another BJP leader, Vijay Kumar Sinha, took oath as deputy chief minister.
On July 3, 2024, Samrat Chaudhary traveled to Ayodhya in UP, took a dip in the Saryu River, shaved his head, and offered or gave up his turban at the Ram Temple. “I dedicate this turban that I have been wearing for the past 22 months to Lord Ram,” he told reporters.
When asked about Nitish not being removed from the throne, Chaudhary said: “The day Nitish Kumar resigned from the post of Prime Minister [Mahagathbandhan] I rejoined the NDA and announced that I would dedicate my turban to Lord Ram. He said the pledge was about removing Nitish from the opposition camp.
The BJP chose him after much suspense
Now the arc is complete in at least one way, a somewhat simplified one. Nitish Kumar’s resignation from his post as Speaker to move to the Rajya Sabha, and the BJP’s decision to appoint Samrat Chaudhary as his successor, gives the 57-year-old politician the award.
Chaudhry’s rise was built on aggressive political positions and class calculations. He belongs to the Koeri-Kushwaha community, which accounts for about 4.2% of Bihar’s population, and is among the most influential OBC groups after the Yadavs.
For many years, Nitish Kumar’s political power relied on the so-called “Luv-Kush” mix of Kurmi and Kori communities, using the names of Lord Ram’s two sons. By dropping Samrat Chaudhary, the BJP has tried to break into this same equation, analysts told HT.
His political journey was not linear at all. He started with Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD in 1990, and became a minister in Lalu’s wife Rabri Devi’s government in 1999. He moved to Nitish’s JD(U) in 2014, then served in Jitan Ram Manjhi’s government when Nitish briefly left the chair after his party’s poor performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Chaudhary joined the BJP in 2017. After the BJP-RJD victory last year, he even got the home affairs portfolio as one of the two deputy chief ministers, essentially making him No. 2 in the regime.
But even after the announcement of Nitish going to the Rajya Sabha, the name of the successor has not yet been finalized, as the Modi-Shah-led BJP is known to pick even low-profile leaders for the post of Prime Minister at times.
Opposition leaders have raised questions about discrepancies in his election declarations and the 1995 murder case in which his name was mentioned alongside his father’s, accusations that his supporters reject as political targeting.
Political family legacy
Samrat Chaudhary’s father, Shakuni Chaudhary, was an army soldier-turned-politician who started his career in the Congress, and often switched sides between frenemies Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar.
Shakuni was elected to the Bihar Assembly from Tarapur, now the seat of Samrat, as an independent in 1985; He then won the same seat on a Congress ticket in 1990, before moving to the Samata Party, then the RJD, and later former JD(U) CM Jitan Ram Manjhi Hindustani Awam Morcha; Before he finally retired from active politics, though he did make appearances at BJP events. Shakuni Chaudhary represented Tarapur six times between 1985 and 2010. His wife and Samrat’s mother, Parvati Devi, served as MLA from Tarapur.
