BJP state president and MLC Samrat Choudhary was on Sunday chosen the leader of the BJP’s legislature party, paving the way for him to become the deputy chief minister of Bihar.

In March last year, the then Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Bihar Legislative Council had been picked by the BJP as its Bihar president. Choudhary (54), a Kushwaha OBC leader, was given the task to deliver the 2025 Assembly polls for the party.

Choudhary is one of the few BJP leaders who has regularly taken on Nitish Kumar. He often criticised the JD(U) supremo on “administrative lapses”, even when the BJP was part of the ruling alliance. Choudhary also used to back ideological positions of the BJP at the time, even at the expense of inviting the wrath of the JD(U).

With his elevation as state chief, the BJP had hoped to engineer a split in Nitish’s core “Luv-Kush” (OBC Kurmi-Koeri) vote base. With Upendra Kushwaha breaking away from the JD(U) earlier, the BJP anyway had made a major dent in that core vote bank. Upendra Kushwaha has dropped several hints recently that his new party, the Rashtriya Lok Janata Dal (RLJD), will align with the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha and 2025 Assembly polls. Kushwahas constitute about 6% of the state’s population.

Choudhary is the son of former Tarapur MLA Shakuni Choudhary, who had been with the RJD for a long time and was a strong anti-BJP voice. He himself was a part of both the RJD and JD(U) earlier, before he joined the BJP in 2017.

Choudhary’s political innings, however, had begun with the Samata Party, formed by George Fernandes and Nitish. He later joined the RJD and in May 1999, became a minister in Rabri Devi’s government. He won from Parbatta (Khagaria) in 2000 as an RJD nominee. But by 2014, he had switched to the JD(U) and was later made an MLC and minister.

After he switched to the BJP in 2017, the party nurtured him as its leading Kushwaha face. As the Tarapur seat went to the JD(U) in its alliance with the JD(U), the BJP accommodated Choudhary as an MLC in 2020, and ensured him the important Panchayati Raj portfolio, before Nitish dumped the BJP in 2022 and formed a government with the Mahagathbandhan.

Choudhary’s political stock has been on the rise since, with the Kushwaha leader emerging as a frontline critic of Nitish and attracting attention of the party’s brass, who rewarded him by making him the LoP in the Legislative Council.

Upon his elevation as Bihar BJP chief, he had told The Indian Express: “My top priority will be to further strengthen the organisation and spread our reach among the people. Our prime goal is to win maximum seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha, and to form a BJP government in Bihar after the 2025 Assembly polls.”

Asked about his line of attack on the Opposition, Choudhary had said: “We will talk about the failures of the (Mahagathbandhan) government in law and order, and why Nitish Kumar could not do anything beyond the bare basics.” He said the party would also attack Nitish’s “opportunistic” alliance with the RJD, whose top leaders “either stand convicted in corruption cases or are facing corruption charges”.