Newsmaker: Ashok Choudhary, changing permutations at the apex

He met Sonia Gandhi earlier this month and was asked to call off a campaign against Lalu Prasad

When Ashok Choudhary was appointed Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee president, the Congress party was almost extinct there. Now, it is  Choudhary who is in danger of becoming extinct. Party vice-president Rahul Gandhi excluded him from a group of MLAs who called on the leader last week.

Reportedly, among the issues discussed, was whether Choudhary should be removed from the presidentship. “I’m not sure why I am being sidelined like this,” Choudhary said to reporters in Patna. He was, he admitted, hurt at not being invited to the talks that hope to stop a split in the party, after state Chief Minister Nitish Kumar joined the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance a few weeks earlier.

Choudhary is young, relatively speaking, and comes from one of the Mahadalit communities that Nitish has been nurturing. When he took charge, eight of the Congress’ district units were functioning without a president and 25 others without a full executive body. He replaced Mehboob Ali Qaisar after Gandhi had interviewed 18 candidates for the post. 

Choudhary was the youngest PCC chief to be appointed in three decades. His caste identity fit him into the Congress' scheme of using a Dalit/OBC/minority/youth combination to counter Nitish Kumar's model, as well as Lalu Prasad's Muslim-Yadav and Ramvilas Paswan's Muslim-SC models. The previous dalit to head the PCC was Dumar Lal Baitha, 25 years before.

Fluent in Hindi and English, Choudhary studied at Patna University and holds a doctorate in political science, apart from a law degree. He hails from Gaya and is now settled in Patna. His father, Mahavir Choudhary, had been a Congress minister in the state. 

Ashok, who began from the Youth Congress, was a minister of state for prisons in the RJD-Congress government after winning the Barbigha (Shekhpura) seat in 2000. In later elections, he won in February 2005 and then lost in November that year. In 2009, he contested for the Lok Sabha from the Jamui seat and lost.

When he took charge, there were many challenges. Some of these got neutralised in the natural course, such as Sadhu Yadav (bother-in-law of Lalu Prasad), Lovely Anand (wife of jailed former MP Anand Mohan) and Ranjit Ranjan (wife of jailed former MP Pappu Yadav). But, many who were loyal to Lalu Prasad had joined the Congress and it is this lot of MLAs which is demanding he be axed. Choudhary has advocated distance from Prasad, something that has not been heeded by the party leadership.

He must be given credit for the fact that from four MLAs in the earlier assembly, the Congress won 27 in the 2015 election. His closeness to Nitish Kumar is evident. He was education minister in the mahagathbandhan (grand coalition) government and made no secret of the fact that he admired Kumar’s caste outreach.

He reportedly met party president Sonia Gandhi earlier this month and was asked to call off a campaign against Lalu Prasad, in the interest of crafting a ‘secular’ coalition. Now, he has been dropped from a group of MLAs meeting Rahul Gandhi. He can be forgiven for thinking he is being sent a message. Such are the perils of high politics.