Samrat Choudhary is new chief of Bihar BJP

PATNA: National BJP president J P Nadda on Thursday elevated leader of opposition in Bihar legislative council Samrat Choudhary to the post of the party's state president, giving a clear signal that the top brass is interested in forging the non-Yadav combination from among the backward caste sections under the saffron umbrella.
Choudhary, after his elevation, said the BJP would win all the 40 parliamentary seats form the next government in the state in 2025 by gaining majority in the 243-member state assembly.
Choudhary, who belongs to the Kushwaha (or traditional Koeri) caste, is the first non-Yadav state president of the BJP from among the backward castes - Yadavs, Kushwahas and Kurmis.
His father Shakuni was considered leader of the Koeri caste people in the 1990s, but changed parties at will - Congress, RJD, Samata Party and the JD(U).
The first task of Choudhary is to queer the pitch for the Grand Alliance. In the state's political parlance, Kurmi-Koeri combination, is also called the Luv-Kush combine, that, by and large, has been with CM Nitish Kumar as far as assembly elections are concerned.
However, nationally, they, along with extremely backward caste (EBC) groups from among the Hindus, switched their loyalty to PM Narendra Modi, both in the 2014 and 2019 parliamentary elections. Accordingly, it will be interesting to watch the political behaviour of the Kurmi caste people, whose natural alignment is expected to remain with Nitish.
The key task before Choudhary is to split the Luv-Kush combination. How hard or easy it would be for him will become amply clear in the run up to the 2024 parliamentary elections, or over the next one year.
Earlier, the BJP had played such a game with respect to the Yadav caste people. The party had tested the potential of its reach and possible spread among the Yadavs by first installing former state minister Nand Kishore Yadav as state president in the 1990s, and then by making him leader of opposition in the state assembly, but he could not breach the Yadav fort ruled by RJD chief Lalu Prasad.
Subsequently, the BJP first made Nityanand Rai the state president, and then included him in the Union council of ministers, but he too could not do much to improve BJP's reach in the state.
It is believed that Choudhary was very much on the radar of Union home minister Amit Shah, who gave prominence to him at the party's national council meet, and also made him sit on the dais at the Kisan Majdoor Samagam held on February 25.
Implicitly, BJP has been hoping that Choudhary would succeed in bringing the people of his own caste to the BJP. But there are obvious hurdles and hiccups.
For, even if around 13% upper caste people are assumed to remain with the BJP and around 6% of the Kushwaha people add up to that, the BJP would have to bring into its fold a major chunk of around 31% of the EBC people, who for the last over 15 years have remained Nitish's mainstay. The BJP insiders say that the party has already started working to reach out to the EBC groups.
The RJD and JD (U) together are banking on Yadavs (13% population), Muslims (16%) and Kurmis (4%).