Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Mar 4: As anticipated even before the state Assembly elections last year, the Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, the chief of the Janata Dal (United), seems all set to yield the top post to the BJP nd imself move to the Rajya Sabha.
As a consolation, Mr Kumar’s son Nishant Kumar may be accommodated as a deputy chief minister.
Despite the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Union Home Minister Amit Shah had been repeatedly assuring the JD(U) before the elections that Mr Nitish Kumar would remain the leader if the alliance retain power, the state BJP leadership had been eying the top office for some time.
The next Chief Minister who will step into Kumar’s shoes will be a BJP man, sources have said. The huge change — that would spell the end of an era for Bihar – could take effect in the coming Rajya Sabha election, nomination for which is expected to be filed this week.
A leader close to Nitish Kumar said, “It is time to mourn. Everything had been decided in Delhi.” Sources said he may resign as early as next week. While Kumar’s stance on the matter is not yet clear, the shift, if it happens, will place the BJP in the driving seat in Bihar – a spot it has been craving for a while.
Several BJP leaders are in the running for the Chief Minister’s post. Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary and Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai are being considered frontrunners. The move to shift Kumar has been anticipated since before the 2025 assembly elections. But action was not taken in haste given Kumar’s illustrious track record.
Kumar, 75, has been Bihar’s longest-serving Chief Minister, having taken oath a record 10 times. He has been in the hot seat since 2015, except for the brief period when Jitan Ram Manjhi – his close aide at the time — was the Chief Minister. He has always spearheaded election campaigns in Bihar — be it for the NDA or the Grand Alliance Mahagathbandhan, wherever he happened to be at the time.
And he won the elections as one of the most popular Chief Ministers of the state with a solid support base that backed him despite all his political manoeuvrings and change of camp. In 2025, when he was almost written off by political pundits, he made a triumphant comeback, buoyed by the support of the state’s women, whose loyalty he won with his cycles for schoolgirls’ scheme and subsequently, the liquor ban in the state.
For the BJP, it was a daunting thought to replace him, even when electoral math had placed them in the top spot in Bihar and made Kumar’s Janata Dal United a distant second. But even so, the state leaders have not been content with waiting in the wings. That, coupled with what the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal has termed Kumar’s age-related cognitive decline, has opened the path to a change of regime.
Bihar currently has two Deputy Chief Ministers from the BJP — the more influential of whom is Samrat Chaudhary, who also holds the Home Ministry. The name of Patna Digha MLA Sanjeev Chaurasia is also being discussed. Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai, who comes from the Yadav community and is very close to the Union Home Minister, is also making the rounds.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah has repeatedly talked about giving Nityanand Rai a major responsibility from public platforms. Party insiders have said the Chief Minister of Bihar must be from a backward caste.
