Samrat Choudhary was sworn in as Bihar Chief Minister at Lok Bhavan in Patna on Wednesday morning, with Governor Syed Ata Hasnain administering the oath of office — ending the era of Nitish Kumar’s dominance over Bihar’s politics and beginning what is simultaneously a new chapter for the BJP in a state it has partnered to govern for two decades without ever holding the Chief Minister’s chair.
The 57-year-old becomes Bihar’s first ever BJP Chief Minister — a historic milestone for a party that has been the dominant force in India’s national politics for over a decade but had never led the government in one of the country’s most politically consequential states. Bihar’s 243-seat assembly, its enormous voter base, and its outsized influence on national electoral arithmetic have made it one of the most watched states in Indian politics, and Wednesday’s swearing-in marks the first time the saffron party’s own leader sits in the Bihar CM’s seat rather than the co-pilot’s chair beside a JDU Chief Minister.
The man taking over
Choudhary’s political journey to Bihar’s top office is one of the more unusual in recent Indian political history. He began his career in the 1990s with the Rashtriya Janata Dal — the party of Lalu Prasad Yadav, which has been the BJP’s principal political opponent in Bihar for three decades. His journey from RJD foot soldier to BJP’s first Bihar Chief Minister spans multiple political realignments, a symbolic turban oath that became his most visible political statement, and a rapid institutional rise within the BJP after joining the party in 2018 that took him from state president to Deputy Chief Minister to Chief Minister in under a decade.
That trajectory — from Lalu’s party to leading Bihar for the BJP — is the detail that will most define how Choudhary is understood as a political figure. It reflects both the fluidity of Bihar’s caste-based coalition politics and the BJP’s deliberate strategy of recruiting OBC leaders from rival formations to build a non-Yadav OBC base that can hold together the coalition arithmetic the party needs to govern Bihar.
The shoes to fill
Nitish Kumar, who Choudhary succeeds, was sworn in as Bihar Chief Minister for a record tenth time in November 2025 following the NDA’s landslide victory in the assembly elections. His tenure across multiple terms is associated with “Sushasan” — good governance — a brand built on Bihar’s transformation from a state synonymous with lawlessness, power cuts, and broken roads in the Lalu era to one that achieved measurable improvements in law and order, infrastructure, and female literacy. That brand is Choudhary’s inheritance and his challenge — he must maintain the governance credibility that Nitish built while establishing his own political identity distinct from his predecessor.
Kumar, now a Rajya Sabha MP having been elected to the upper house last week, has said he will spend most of his time in Bihar and that the new government will be formed with his consent and work under his guidance — a statement that reflects JDU’s attempt to maintain relevance and influence in a government where the BJP, with 89 seats to JDU’s 85, now holds the Chief Minister’s post for the first time. How that power dynamic plays out in practice — whether Choudhary establishes genuine Chief Ministerial authority or operates in the shadow of his predecessor’s continued presence — is the defining question of his early tenure.
What Bihar needs from its new CM
Bihar remains one of India’s lowest per-capita income states despite the improvements of the Nitish era. Outmigration of working-age population to other states — particularly to Delhi, Mumbai, and Punjab — reflects a jobs deficit that infrastructure improvements alone have not resolved. The state’s agricultural economy is vulnerable to climate shocks. Industrial investment, despite policy efforts, has lagged behind comparable states. And the Iran war’s energy price shock has hit Bihar’s rural population — heavily dependent on diesel for irrigation and transport — with particular force given the state’s agricultural character.
For Choudhary, the immediate priority will be cabinet formation and the distribution of portfolios between BJP and JDU in a manner that satisfies both parties’ expectations without creating the kind of coalition tension that has destabilised previous Bihar governments. The medium-term priority will be demonstrating that a BJP Chief Minister can deliver on Bihar’s development agenda as effectively as Nitish Kumar’s Sushasan brand promised to — and actually did in several measurable respects.
The turban is off. The oath has been taken. Bihar has its first BJP Chief Minister.
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