Amid Samrat-Tejashwi 'duel' in assembly, BJP's first Bihar CM wins confidence vote

Patna: Bihar Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary on Friday further cemented his grip on the party as well as the state government after he won the vote of confidence in the Bihar Assembly, barely nine days after being sworn-in as the CM.

Samrat, who is the first Chief Minister from the BJP to don the mantle in this part of the Hindi Heartland, had a verbal duel with the Leader of the Opposition Tejashwi Yadav during the debate on the confidence motion at a special one-day session in the Assembly.

Tejashwi, who launched a vitriolic attack on the Treasury benches, said Samrat Choudhary need not have moved a confidence vote today had the BJP declared its own CM face during the November 2025 Bihar Assembly polls.

“You gave the slogan: 2025 to 2030, phir se Nitish” but “finished Nitish” within weeks of winning the poll after projecting him as the CM face. We always maintained that the BJP will backstab Nitish after using him in the polls....It is strange that Bihar is having a fifth Government in the last five years (this includes Nitish’s swearing-in too after multiple somersaults),” said Tejashwi, whose party faced a drubbing after NDA won 201 seats out of 243 constituencies.

The RJD-led Mahagatbandhan could win only 35 seats. “An elected CM has been replaced by a selected CM,” Tejashwi took another jibe at Samrat.

Replying to Tejashwi’s charge that the BJP could not find someone from its own ranks to become the Chief Minister and instead made a turncoat, who started his career with the RJD, as the CM, Samrat said, “Even Lalu Prasad became Chief Minister for the first time in March 1990 when the BJP’s 33 MLAs supported him in the Assembly in the fractured mandate.”

Dismissing the charge of “elected CM vs selected CM,” Samrat said, “No one can replace Nitish. It was his will that I am here, and has the blessings of 14 crore people of Bihar in the form of a mandate.”

The confidence motion was passed by a voice vote in the 243-member Assembly.