Bihar chief minister Samrat Choudhary has been at the centre of Prashant Kishor’s attack ever since he embarked on his campaign for the 2025 state assembly polls. Kishor sharpened his offensive against Choudhary when he himself entered the fray in the Bankipur bye-election in Patna.

Now, after winning what was believed to be an “impregnable” fortress of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Kishor is demanding that the Hindutva party’s leadership replace Choudhary – a man of “criminal antecedents and a symbol of Jungle raj” – with a “kabil, imandaar aur yogya (able, honest and qualified)” leader as chief minister. 

“Our battle against Samrat Choudhary will continue till the BJP’s central leadership replaces him as the CM. We have no issue if the BJP wishes to have a CM from the Kushwaha caste. But it should pick an honest and able leader, which the Kushwaha community has in abundance. The Jan Suraj Party’s demand to replace Choudhary is non-negotiable,” Kishor said in virtually all his interviews with different news channels. 

Why is Choudhary central to Kishor’s campaign?

Choudhary faces a court order framing charges against him in connection with the massacre of seven persons belonging to the Kushwaha community in the 1990s. He has also faced allegations of showing different dates of birth in court records and election affidavits, documents which are in the public domain and are frequently cited by Kishor. Questions have also been raised about the lack of transparency surrounding his educational qualifications.

But are allegations of crime and forgery the sole reason behind Kishor’s seemingly relentless campaign to oust Choudhary from Bihar’s “throne”?

Why Choudhary is so important to the BJP leadership is evident from the fact that he became the party’s first chief minister in Bihar.

And more importantly, the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah leadership chose him to........

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