Challenges Before New Bihar CM Samrat Choudhary And SWOT Analysis Of The Situation Before Him

Patna: In the saddle now as the first Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief minister of Bihar, Samrat Choudhary has an uphill task of governing the poorest and the second most populous state (population around 13.07 crore) of the country.

A state whose coffers are empty, society is divided on caste lines, where crime is rampant, corruption is high, industrialisation is low, agriculture is in poor shape, civic amenities are in shambles, and urbanisation is so less that only 1096 square kilometres of its total 94,163 square kilometres area is urban.

ETV Bharat explores the Herculean tasks staring the new chief minister in his face, along with strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that could make or break his efforts.

Challenges: Myriad and formidable

Politically, Samrat will have to ensure that former chief minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular), and the Rashtriya Lok Morcha stick together as allies and power-sharing in the form of cabinet expansion is done in such a manner that none of them are left aggrieved.

The new chief minister will also have to keep intact the ‘social engineering’ of Nitish in which the extremely backward classes (EBCs), non-Yadav other backward classes (OBCs), and Mahadalits provided a massive base to keep him in power for over two decades.

The BJP old guard and parent organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has been skeptical about Samrat due to his previous innings with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the JD(U), and he will have to show his promptness in implementing party policies, especially the so called ‘Hindutva’ agenda, to the hilt.

Socially, Samrat has large shoes to fill. He will have to carry forward the concept of ‘inclusive development’ as propagated by Nitish and maintaining communal harmony in the society. His predecessor paid attention to all groups of people, irrespective of caste, creed, gender, and despite being a part of the NDA for a long time, upheld the secular aspect of governance.

Moreover, Nitish, despite having ruled the state for over 20 years, left with an untainted image. The new chief minister will need to uphold it when it comes to him.

Economically, Bihar is in shambles. The social welfare schemes launched or strengthened in the run of the November 2025 Assembly elections, have started taking a toll on the financial health of the state, so much so, that it faced difficulty in paying the contractors, engaged in various projects, in the months of February and March, in the just ended fiscal year 2025-26.

Government estimates suggest that the welfare schemes – including Rs 10,000 given to around 1.4 crore women to start a vocation of their choice and a promise to provide further financial aid if they do well – burdened the state exchequer with Rs 30,000 crore, while free 125 units electricity to all consumers cost Rs 18,000 crore. These have pushed Bihar into sustained financial pressure as these are recurring doles.

Additionally, Bihar is weighed down with debt worth Rs 4 lakh crore, which is around 40 per cent of its gross state domestic product (GSDP) of Rs 9.92 lakh crore in 2024-25. The government has to pay more than Rs 23,000 crore as interest on the debt taken from various agencies.

Besides, the state has to spend Rs 6,000 crore per month or Rs 72,000 crore per year to provide salary to its employees. Overall per capita income of the state is the lowest in the country. Amid all these, the new chief minister will have to maintain the double-digit economic growth rate.

“The Bihar economy is imploding. The government is lacking resources to further its development agenda and is managing the situation somehow with payment delays. Things will improve a bit with the beginning of the new financial year, but thought should be spared for provisioning for the future,” a senior officer of the state finance department told ETV Bharat.

Administratively, one of the USPs of Nitish was his all-round vision for the development of the state and he followed it up with various plans, including his seven resolves I, II and III. He turned the state from an infrastructure deficient state to one with a good network of roads and bridges, supply of electricity, school and hospital buildings. It also raised expectations about governance among the common people and Samrat will have to keep pace with them.

Strengths, with a tinge of tradition

One of the strengths of Samrat is that he has inherited a legacy of ‘good governance’ and strong base of development from his Nitish, who was also known as ‘Sushasan Babu’ (man of good governance), clearly laying the path that he should tread on. Unlike his predecessor, he does not have to venture out into uncharted territory.

The massive mandate of 202 (at present 201) out of 243 Assembly seats, will help him in his endeavours in governance, policy framing and new legislation. Besides, the ‘double-engine government’ (same political dispensation at the Centre and in the state) will come to his rescue in several things, especially the finances and development.

The new chief minister also inherits vast human resources – skilled and unskilled, which could give him an edge if he wants to attract industries to the state.

Weaknesses that require action

Nitish’s overdependence on bureaucracy has allowed it to go out of control in the democratic set-up, undermining the policy of ‘people first’ and the concept of ‘public service’. The new chief minister will have to break the stranglehold.

The presence of five-parties in the ruling alliance in Bihar will lead to various pressures and pulls. All of them will obviously try to cater to their voter base, make efforts to expand it, and gain more power. The new chief minister will also have do fine tuning and balancing between them, which will consume a significant amount of time and energy.

Samrat will also have to contend with groupism and presence of multiple power centres in the BJP to subsist and continue as the chief minister.

Opportunities that need to be tapped

As political pundits assert, the first 100 days of any new government is considered very important in setting the agenda of its work and creating a favourable public perception about it. Nitish and Modi have been past masters in this regard, and Samrat, who is just a day old as the chief minister, has the chance to showcase his creativity, ingenuity and philosophy of development.

Samrat has himself been in politics for around three decades, and hails from a political family - his father Shakuni Choudhary is a veteran politician and a former minister, while his mother was a legislator. The new chief minister can use his experience and the guidance of his father to remove the bottlenecks in Bihar’s development that he might have observed.

Threats which need to be addressed

Upholding law and order is the basic of every government across the world. The first thing that former chief minister Nitish Kumar did on coming to power in Bihar in a full-fledged manner in November 2005 was to crack down on crime. Unfortunately, Bihar has slipped down on this front in recent years and crime has spiralled out control. Samrat will have to address it quickly as the situation erodes public and investor confidence.

Similarly, corruption right from the high offices to the block and panchayat-level offices has become rampant, leaving the common people harassed and annoyed. The situation has the potential of turning into public dissatisfaction and unrest, and could hurt the future electoral prospects of the BJP and the NDA in the state. Samrat will have to pay special attention on checking corruption, which at present seems to be a tall task.

Read More