Bihar chief minister Samrat Choudhary won a vote of confidence in the Assembly on Friday and asserted that his administration would follow the governance model of his predecessor Nitish Kumar.
Samrat, the first from the BJP to head the Bihar government, emphasised continuity in policy, particularly a firm stance against the so-called "three Cs" — crime, corruption and communalism.
These remarks in his post-trust-vote address to the House suggested his administration would not immediately adopt a hard-line Hindutva posture, unlike those of most other BJP chief ministers in the country.
The BJP is keen to signal that the recent change in Bihar's leadership does not indicate a departure from the governance model followed by the previous administration.
Nitish Kumar, who governed the state for over two decades — mostly in alliance with the BJP — had cultivated the trust of minority communities, particularly Muslims, through a policy of zero tolerance for communal politics.
The BJP leadership fears that adopting an overtly hard-line Hindutva stance, like Yogi Adityanath has in adjoining Uttar Pradesh, would strain the party’s ties with the JDU, still led by Nitish.
"There will be no compromise at any cost on crime, corruption and communalism," Samrat said, tying his vision to both Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s development agenda and Nitish’s focus on a prosperous Bihar.
The NDA, which commands a comfortable majority with 202 members in an Assembly of 243, had the trust motion passed through a voice vote. Samrat, sworn in as chief minister on April 15, is likely to expand his cabinet after the Bengal elections.
Speaking in the Assembly, the new chief minister attacked the principal Opposition RJD. He rejected leader of the Opposition Tejashwi Yadav’s characterisation of him as a product of "Lalu’s school of politics" and accused former chief minister Lalu Prasad of past "atrocities" against his family.
He claimed that more than 20 members of his extended family, including himself, had been jailed by the erstwhile RJD government (1990-2005). Samrat had begun his political career in the RJD in 1990, moved to the JDU in 2014 and joined the BJP in 2017. He was accused in a murder case in 1995 but was discharged.