Bharatiya Janata Party leader Samrat Choudhary on Wednesday took oath as the chief minister of Bihar, replacing Janata Dal (United) chief Nitish Kumar.
Samrat Choudhary is the first BJP chief minister of Bihar.
JD(U) leaders Bijendra Prasad Yadav and Vijay Kumar Choudhary were sworn in as deputy chief ministers in the new government.
Kumar, Bihar’s longest-serving chief minister, resigned from his post on Tuesday. He was the chief minister for nearly two decades in all, having taken oath for the post ten times.
Soon after Kumar resigned on Tuesday, the BJP elected Samrat Choudhary, who was the deputy chief minister in the government led by the JD(U) chief, as its legislative party leader. Later in the day, he was also elected the leader of the National Democratic Alliance in the state.
Samrat Choudhary’s political career
Samrat Choudhary, who hails from Bihar’s Munger district, entered politics in 1990 as a member of the Rashtriya Janata Dal led by Lalu Prasad Yadav. He was first inducted as a minister in 1999 in the RJD government headed by Rabri Devi, where he held the agriculture portfolio.
However, Samrat Choudhary resigned soon afterwards as he was under 25 years of age, the minimum required to hold a ministerial post.
In 2000, Samrat Choudhary won the Parbatta Assembly seat as an RJD candidate. He went on to become the party’s chief whip in 2010.
Samrat Choudhary shifted to the JD(U) in 2014 and was also said to have orchestrated the crossover of 13 RJD MLAs to the Nitish Kumar-led party, according to The Indian Express. He was appointed Minister of Urban Development and Housing during the nine-month tenure of Jitan Ram Manjhi as chief minister.
Samrat Choudhary joined the BJP in 2017 and became the leader of the Opposition in the Bihar Legislative Council in 2022. When Kumar left the Mahagathbandhan and returned to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in 2024, Samrat Choudhary was appointed deputy chief minister.
Nitish Kumar’s resignation
Kumar’s resignation came after he was elected to the Upper House of Parliament on March 16 for the first time. He was sworn in as a Rajya Sabha MP on Friday.
In the Bihar elections held in November, the JD(U) had won 85 seats, almost doubling its tally of 43 seats from the 2020 polls. However, the BJP emerged as the single-largest party with 89 of the 101 constituencies it contested.
Kumar, while announcing his candidature for the Rajya Sabha elections on March 5, had said that he had desired to serve in all four legislative roles at the state and central level – a member of the Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council, as well as of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.
He was a member of the Legislative Council and he had previously served as an MLA and a Lok Sabha MP.
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