Nitish Kumar Era Ends, Samrat Choudhary to Be BJP's First Bihar Chief Minister
New Delhi: In 2023, Samrat Choudhary, then Bihar Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief, vowed in the state legislature that he won’t remove his turban until then chief minister Nitish Kumar resigned from his post. On Tuesday (April 14), Kumar resigned as the chief minister, ending his almost two-decade long tenure at the state’s helm and made way for Choudhary to be his successor, and the first BJP chief minister in the state.
Chaudhary, an influential leader from the Kushwaha (OBC) community in Bihar, was functioning as Bihar’s deputy chief minister. On the Bihar poll trail, controversy around his age clouded his campaign. In 1999, he was forced to resign as minister from the Rabri Devi-led government also due to a controversy around his age. However, Chaudhary, has dogged the controversy and emerged as the saffron party’s first chief minister in the state.
He was unanimously elected as the leader of the BJP legislative party in Bihar this afternoon. The announcement came after Nitish, the Janata Dal (United) leader, submitted his resignation after dissolving his cabinet today.
With Choudhary, the BJP has now successfully placed its own man as the head of the government, the final move for a play that started during the November 2025 Bihar assembly elections. Nitish’s exit from the state’s politics has drawn the curtains to a close on the era of social justice leaders leading the state in the aftermath of post-Mandal politics.
The Wire has previously reported that Nitish's exit has seeds in the 2025 assembly election trail, and ended the BJP's long arc of bait and wait in the state. During the 2025 state polls, it was widely speculated that it would be Nitish’s swan song. The BJP made little effort to hide that it was waiting in the wings.
For the first time, the BJP and the JD(U) contested an equal number of seats – 101. The saffron party stopped short of ever formally naming him as the NDA’s chief ministerial face. Even during the election campaign, while there was unease among JD(U) voters, the BJP insisted that the elections were being contested under Nitish’s leadership, yet they never formally declared him as the chief ministerial face.
Nitish's departure and move to the Rajya Sabha came a month after he announced that he always had a “desire” in his heart to serve in the upper house of parliament. Nitish's decision to move to the Rajya Sabha came barely four months after he took oath as Bihar's chief minister for the tenth time. In November 2025, the BJP-JD(U) led National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA’s) recorded a resounding victory in the Bihar assembly elections, with the saffron party emerging as the single largest party.
In a statement on X, Choudhary on Tuesday thanked the BJP leadership for electing him as the BJP's legislature party leader.
"Your collective trust, affection, and blessings are my greatest strength and inspiration; with this very energy, I will keep moving forward on this path of public service," he said.
In a separate statement he also said that under Nitish and prime minister Narendra Modi's "experienced guidance" he will "continue to work tirelessly to take Bihar to new heights of development, good governance, and prosperity."
In the 2025 Bihar assembly elections, Choudhary won the Tarapur assembly constituency by over 45,000 votes. During the poll campaign, Jan Suraaj founder Prashant Kishor ran a campaign questioning his age and educational qualifications. The poll campaign also saw Kishor raking up the 1995 Tarapur case in which Congress candidate Sachchidanand Singh and his associates were killed in a grenade attack during the assembly elections.
Kishor had pointed to discrepancies in Choudhary's poll affidavits and alleged that he had falsified his age to be declared as a minor to get bail. Choudhary had dismissed the allegations.
Choudhary's father Shakuni Choudhary, was one of the founding members of the Samata Party and had served as MLA and MP from the party, as well as from the Congress and RJD.
Choudhary himself became a minister in the Rabri Devi-led RJD government in 1999 but resigned following controversy over his age.
He left the RJD for the JD(U) in 2014 and joined the BJP in 2017.
Choudhary has won two assembly elections in 2000 and 2010.
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