Samrat Choudhary takes oath as Bihar Chief Minister

• BJP’s Samrat Choudhary took oath as Bihar Chief Minister on April 15.

• He is the first BJP chief minister of Bihar, the only state in the Hindi heartland where the party had not held the CM position before.

• JD(U) stalwarts Vijay Kumar Chaudhary and Bijendra Prasad Yadav also took oath as deputy Chief Ministers.   

• All three were administered the oath of office by Governor Syed Ata Hasnain at Lok Bhavan, a day after JDU supremo Nitish Kumar resigned from the top post.

• Nitish Kumar, 75, became a member of the Rajya Sabha, bringing an end to his 20-year tenure as Chief Minister.

The rise of Samrat Choudhary

• Samrat Choudhary, 57, was born on November 16, 1968, in Lakhanpur village in Munger district. 

• His father, Shakuni Choudhary, was a six-time MLA and also served as a Member of Parliament. His mother, Parvati Devi, represented the Tarapur constituency as an MLA.

• Samrat Choudhary began his political career as a minister in Bihar nearly three decades ago.

• In 1999, the then Chief Minister Rabri Devi inducted Choudhary into her Cabinet.

• A complaint soon reached the Raj Bhavan (now Lok Bhavan) that Choudhary, who was then not a member of the state legislature, had not completed 25 years of age.

• Accordingly, the then Governor Suraj Bhan ordered Choudhary’s sacking, in a rare instance of the removal of a minister being effected without the government not recommending the same.

• After his unceremonious dismissal, the RJD, headed by Rabri Devi’s husband Lalu Prasad, fielded him in the Assembly polls of 2000, and Choudhary was re-inducted as a minister.

• In 2005, the RJD lost power to the JD(U)-BJP combine, but Choudhary remained with the RJD and was appointed as the chief whip of the party five years later.

• By 2014, Choudhary joined the JD(U) government, then headed by Jitan Ram Manjhi.

• Manjhi stepped down months later after Nitish Kumar, his patron, decided to make a comeback as the Chief Minister.

• In 2017, he joined the BJP, and rose to become the state vice president a year later.

• In 2024, when Nitish Kumar returned to the NDA, Choudhary, who had by now risen to be the state BJP president,  was named as a Deputy CM.