Samrat Choudhary Wiki, Age, Caste, Wife, Children, Family, Biography & More

Samrat Choudhary is an Indian politician. In January 2024, he took charge as the deputy chief minister of Bihar along with Vijay Kumar Sinha under the Nitish Kumar government. He is the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Bihar.

Wiki/Biography

Samrat Choudhary was born on Saturday, 16 November 1968 (age 55 years; as of 2023) in Lakhanpur, Bihar. His zodiac sign is Scorpio. He is also known by the name Rakesh Kumar. He has completed a Doctor of LITT degree from California Public University, USA. He then completed a PFC course at Kamraj University, Tamil Nadu.

Physical Appearance

Height (approx.): 5′ 11″

Weight (approx.): 80 kg

Hair Colour: Black

Eye Colour: Black

Family

Parents & Siblings

Samrat Choudhary’s father, Shakuni Choudhary, is an army personnel-turned-politician who has served as an MP and a MLA and is also a founding member of the Samata Party.

His mother, Parvati Devi, is an Indian politician who served as an MLA from the Tarapur constituency of Bihar. She died in September 2022 after suffering from an illness for a long time.

He has 4 siblings. His brother Rohit Choudhary is a member of the JDU party.

Wife & Children

Samrat Choudhary is married to Mamta Kumari who is an advocate. The couple is blessed with two children, a son, and a daughter.

Religion

Samrat Choudhary follows Hinduism. ^[1]Instagram – Samrat Choudhary

Caste

Samrat Choudhary is an OBC representative for the BJP and is a member of the Koeri caste. In Bihar, the Kushwaha caste is the second largest OBC group after the Yadavs. ^[2]The Telegraph

Address

43, Harding Road, Patna, Bihar

Signature

Career

Ministries held

In 1990, Samrat Choudhary entered active politics and was sworn in as the Minister of Agriculture in the Bihar government on 19 May 1999 under the Rabri Devi government. As the Minister of Agriculture, he looked over the Measurements and Horticulture department but was soon removed from the ministry after the opposition claimed that he was underage. On 2 June 2014, he was appointed as the Minister of Urban Development and Housing Department in the Jitan Ram Manjhi government. In 2021, Samrat was appointed as a Panchayati Raj minister in Nitish Kumar‘s expanded cabinet on the basis of BJP quota.

Member of Bihar Legislative Assembly

In 2000, he was elected to the Bihar Legislative Assembly from the Parbatta constituency on a ticket of the Rashtriya Janata Dal party. In 2010, he contested the Bihar Legislative Assembly elections from the Parbatta constituency on a ticket of the Rashtriya Janata Dal party and defeated his nearest rival Ramanand Prasad Singh by 808 votes.

Party Positions held

In 2010, he was appointed as the Chief Whip of the opposition party in the Bihar Legislative Assembly. In 2018, he was appointed as the vice president of the Bihar unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party. In 2020, he was one of the lead campaigners for the National Democratic Alliance during the Bihar Assembly election. On 24 August 2022, he preceded Rabri Devi to take charge as the leader of the opposition in the Bihar Legislative Council. In March 2023, Choudhary succeeded Sanjay Jaiswal as president of the Bihar unit of the Bhartiya Janata Party. According to political analysts, the party leadership took this action to build a strong base among the Kushwaha voters.

Member of Bihar Legislative Council

In May 2014, he was appointed as a member of the Bihar Legislative Council by the then-governor of Bihar, D. Y. Patil. On 29 June 2020, he was again elected as a member of the Bihar Legislative Council.

Deputy Chief Minister

On 28 January 2024, Samrat Choudhary, along with Vijay Kumar Sinha, took charge as the Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar. The same day, he was also elected as the leader of the BJP legislature party. In an interview, while thanking the BJP and expressing his gratitude towards the party, he said,

BJP did a historic thing for my life. This is an emotional moment for me to have been elected as the Leader of the Legislative Party to be a part of the government. The mandate that we received in 2020 for the development of Bihar and to end the terror of Lalu Yadav – when the BJP received the proposal from Nitish Kumar to ensure that there is no ‘jungle raj’ in Bihar and Sanjay Jha came here as his ambassador, we decided to support it.”

Controversies

Allegations of forging age

In November 1999, Samrat Choudhary was dismissed from the Rabri Devi Cabinet by Governor Suraj Bhan on the ground that he was underage; he quoted Article 164 of the Constitution which by implication suggested that to be made a minister, a person should have obtained the eligible age for being a member of the state Legislative Assembly (25) or the Legislative Council (30). In addition, Governor Suraj Bhan gave the state government instructions to file a case of fraud, forgery, and misrepresentation against Choudhary and to initiate a repayment of all salary and benefits given to him since his appointment as a minister. The dispute initially arose from a petition that Samata Party leaders Raghunath Jha and P.K. Sinha filed with the state Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) A. K. Basu and then-governor Justice B.M. Lal, claiming that Choudhary was not old enough to be a minister because he had not turned 25. Lal had instructed Basu to look into the situation and provide a report in a span of 25 days. Lal retired later on, but the matter came up again when Suraj Bhan instructed the CEO to turn in the entire report by 5 November 1999. Basu, in his report to the governor, mentioned that Choudhary had not cooperated with the investigators and stated,

The minister failed to prove that he has attained the age to be an eligible minister.” ^[3]India Today

Charges under IPC

Samrat has been charged under 2 sections of IPC, IPC Section-171F, which is a charge related to undue influence or personation at an election, and IPC Section-188, which is a charge related to disobedience to order duty promulgated by a public servant. ^[4]My Neta

Controversial statement

In August 2023, Samrat Choudhary hit the headlines after he passed a controversial statement on the program Tulsi Ke Ram. He said that he was not going to accept the year 1947 as the year of India’s independence and argued that India attained independence in the true sense only after the Sampoorna Kranti (Total Revolution Movement) 1977, which was led by Jayaprakash Narayan. It was a political movement initiated by students in Bihar against misrule and corruption by the state government, which was later turned against Indira Gandhi‘s government at the central level. ^[5]ABP News This later led to various ministers questioning Samrat Choudhary’s knowledge.

Assets/Properties

Movable Assets

Cash: Rs. 1,50,000

Deposits in Banks, Financial Institutions and Non-Banking Financial Companies: Rs. 7,74,606

Bonds, Debentures and Shares in companies: Rs. 10,40,000

Jewellery: Rs. 6,00,000

Immovable Assets

Agricultural Land: Rs. 86,11,408

Non-Agricultural Land: Rs. 4,87,44,744

Commercial Buildings: Rs. 85,00,000

Note: The given estimates are according to the year 2019. It excludes the assets owned by his wife and dependents (minor). ^[6]My Neta

Net Worth

Samrat Choudhary’s net worth (as of 2019) was approximately Rs. 8 crores. ^[7]My Neta

Facts/Trivia

• Samrat Choudhary remained associated with the Rashtriya Janata Dal party up till 2014, and later became a part of a rebel faction.

• In February 2014, Samrat Choudhary led the defection of 13 MLAs from RJD to seek recognition as a separate group.

• He filed a PIL in the Patna High Court where he challenged the validity of RJD President Lalu Prasad’s distribution of the party symbol to candidates and claimed that Lalu Prasad was ineligible to hold the position following his conviction in a corruption case. ^[8]The Economic Times

• Later, in 2014 he joined the JD(U) which was then headed by Jitan Ram Manjhi. Three years later i.e. in 2017, he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party.
  

  Samrat Choudhary (centre) after being inducted into the BJP

• Samrat Choudhary has been seen wearing a saffron turban since September 2022. Initially, he started wearing the turban as a mark of grief after his mother Parvati Devi died due to an illness, but sometime later it took a political form.

• In 2023, after Nitish Kumar broke away from the BJP to form a new government with the backing of the Grand Alliance, Choudhary vowed to wear the turban until Nitish was removed from the chief minister’s position.

• In an interview, Samrat talked about a conversation he had with Nitish and told about what he said to Nitish on being asked why he wears a turban regularly,
  

  I told him (CM) I have taken a vow to remove him from the throne and the ‘pagadi’ (turban) will get removed the day you are dethroned. I said I also seek your blessing for fulfilling my wish.”

  

  Samrat Choudhary wearing a saffron turban

• In his leisure time, he enjoys playing cricket. He has also supported and promoted a number of state-wide athletic and cultural events.