Who is Samrat Choudhary, the leader Amit Shah wants to give ‘big responsibility’ in Bihar

BJP leaders believe that Bihar Deputy CM Samrat Choudhary is the chosen one. A few days ago, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, while addressing a public meeting in Tarapur, located in Munger district, and the Assembly constituency from where Samrat is contesting, asked voters to ensure his victory. “He is to be given a big responsibility,” Shah declared.

This has led political circles to speculate that if BJP leads the NDA government after the Assembly election, Samrat Choudhary will be the automatic choice as the first BJP Chief Minister of the state. Various surveys have suggested that around 10 per cent of the population wants to see him as the CM, still behind Tejashwi Yadav and Nitish Kumar, or even Prashant Kishore. However, there is no other leader in the BJP state leadership who has seen such a meteoric rise in the party.

Samrat joined BJP in 2016, making his way via RJD, JDU, and Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Ham. He caught Amit Shah’s attention when he met the Home Minister to plead his case for a Rajya Sabha MP seat from UP on the “Kushwaha quota”. After talking to him, Amit Shah told him, “Why are you in a hurry to leave Bihar? We will use you in Bihar.”

In 2017, Samrat was made the vice-president of BJP. He was then made an MLC and eventually ended up as both the president of the state BJP and Deputy CM by 2024.

Why he fits in BJP’s game plan

Samrat faces resentment from old-timers in BJP, who see his growing clout with the central leadership. Samrat hails from the second-largest OBC group in Bihar after the Yadavs — the Kushwahas. The Kushwahas have traditionally been Nitish Kumar supporters, under the Luv-Kush combination — Kurmis and Kushwahas — accounting for more than 8 per cent of the population. Unfortunately, for the Kushwahas, apart from a three-day transitional CM Satish Kumar, there have been no chief ministers from this community.

If BJP wanted to make inroads into the second-largest OBC group, Samrat fitted the bill. He is the son of Shakuni Choudhary, one of the most prominent leaders of this community. Samrat came when the BJP leadership was looking to replace Sushil Kumar Modi, who had led the party for over two decades. The central leadership of BJP considered Modi too close to CM Nitish Kumar and believed it created hurdles for BJP’s expansion in Bihar. Thus emerged Samrat Choudhary, the new leader of BJP in Bihar.

At 56, Samrat is still considered young in politics and articulate in expressing his views.

The controversies

Samrat has had his share of controversies. After 2000, as an agreement to join RJD and leave Nitish Kumar, Rakesh Kumar alias Samrat Choudhary was made a minister even without being a member of either legislative house. He was perhaps the only minister in independent India to be dismissed as a minister by the then governor for being under aged — as an MLC, late PK Sinha came up with an affidavit according to which he was only 22 then. This affidavit has haunted him, and recently Jan Suraaj founder Prashant Kishore accused Samrat Choudhary of using a false affidavit to get acquittal from a murder case that happened in Tarapur in 1996. Samrat was shown as a minor.

Responding to the charge, Samrat said he was framed by the Lalu government because his father Shakuni Choudhary was a political opponent.

The flip flops

Samrat’s political stint spanning over two decades has seen several flip-flops. From a Lalu supporter, he turned into a Nitish loyalist. He then joined Jitan Ram Manjhi when Manjhi rebelled against Nitish. Finally, he landed in BJP, surprising everyone. “As a child, I used to attend the RSS shakha,” he told a correspondent, stressing that he was never anti-BJP.

In 2022, when Nitish joined RJD to oust BJP from power, Samrat wore a saffron turban, pledging that he would cut his hair and remove the turban only after he removed Nitish from power. He ended up being deputy to Nitish. He still went to Ayodhya and got his hair shaved. However, political observers say Samrat may be at the right place at the right time.