Samrat Choudhary, Deputy Chief Minister until yesterday, on Wednesday took oath as Bihar Chief Minister, becoming the first BJP leader to occupy the top post in the state. Bihar Governor Syed Ata Hasnain administered the oath of office to Samrat Chaudhary at Lok Bhavan in Patna.
The BJP has chief ministers in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Delhi - all major Hindi heartland states with Bihar as the notable exception. That officially changed today with the elevation of BJP's Samrat Choudhary to the state's top post.
On Tuesday, Nitish Kumar, who is now a Rajya Sabha member, resigned as Chief Minister.
"Now the new government will look after the work in Bihar. The new government will have my full cooperation and guidance," Kumar, Bihar's longest serving Chief Minister, posted on X.
His elevation marks the end of an era dominated by Nitish Kumar's "Sushasan (good governance)" and the beginning of a new chapter for the NDA in Bihar.
The 57-year-old Choudhary, who was Nitish Kumar's deputy, belongs to the Koeri, or Kushwaha caste, a prominent other backward class (OBC) community that accounts for roughly 6-7 per cent of Bihar's population.
Among the backward castes, the Kushwaha community is the largest after the Yadavs. According to sources, the Nitish Kumar's JD(U) had asked the BJP to appoint a Chief Minister from this very caste group.
Born in 1968, Samrat Choudhary comes from a family deeply rooted in politics. His father, Shakuni Choudhary, was a six-time MLA from the Tarapur constituency. His mother, Parvati Devi, won the same seat in 1998 for the now-defunct Samta Party.
Choudhary, who entered active politics in 1990, has pulled many a political switcheroo - from Lalu Yadav's RJD to Nitish's JDU to finally joining the BJP in 2017.
