Degree, age and nepotism, these 3 questions will continue to haunt BJP after Samrat becomes CM.

The new Chief Minister of Bihar, Samrat Chaudhary has been crowned. The rise of Samrat Chaudhary, who joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2014, has been very rapid. His journey from BJP leader in Legislative Council to Chief Minister has been covered very fast. Due to his association with different parties, Tejashwi Yadav is congratulating him by calling him ‘socialist by nature’. BJP has expressed confidence in Samrat Chaudhary and he has to fill the place of a strong leader like Nitish Kumar. Apart from this, three questions are always going to come before Samrat Chaudhary and BJP. These questions are related to Samrat Chaudhary’s degree, his age and familyism.

Interestingly, many times BJP leaders call opposition Tejashwi Yadav the 9th failure and say about him that his status is only because he is the son of Lalu Prasad Yadav. This is the reason that as soon as the name of Samrat Chaudhary was decided, Tejashwi called him a leader from ‘Lalu Yadav’s school’. Now everyone’s eyes will be on Samrat Chaudhary and he will be asked these questions again and again. It remains to be seen how and what answers Samrat Chaudhary gives to the repeatedly raised questions regarding his degree and his real age. Before this let us understand the whole matter.

What is the age controversy?

In the year 1999, the date was 16th November and preparations were going on at Samrat Chaudhary’s house to celebrate his birthday. At the same time, news came from Raj Bhavan that Governor Suraj Bhan dismissed Samrat Chaudhary from Rabri Devi’s cabinet on the grounds of young age and not only dismissed him but ordered the state government to register a case of fraud, forgery and misrepresentation against Chaudhary. He also directed to recover the salary and allowances received from him after becoming a minister. The allegation was that Samrat was below the required age of 25 years to become a minister. Interestingly, the name of Samrat Chaudhary, Rakesh Chaudhary, is found in the media reports on this matter.

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Sanjay Kumar Jha’s report published in India Today magazine on November 29, 1999 is found. According to the report, the Governor found several discrepancies in the documents related to Chaudhary’s age. Age found in school leaving certificate was 31 years. According to the horoscope, his age was only 26 years. The age in the voter list was 24 years and in an affidavit presented in the court in 1995 it was stated that his age at that time was 16 years. According to this, the age in 1999 should have been 20 years. Rakesh or rather Samrat’s elder brother who was studying in Bihar Institute of Technology, was 22 years old in 1999 as per his birth certificate.

Reading this might seem like a game of Sudoku is going on. Probably Governor Suraj Bhan’s math will be strong. Otherwise these numbers are enough to confuse. Well, he had lost the ministerial post due to his age, but even if he had not been dismissed, he would have still lost the post because it would have been 6 months since he became a minister on 19th November i.e. 3 days after his dismissal and till then he had neither become MLA nor MLC.

Why was Samrat Chaudhary dismissed?

Now this question may come in your mind that would the Governor have randomly thought that let’s check the age of the Emperor who was Rakesh till then? The answer is no. Actually, Shakuni Chaudhary and his mother Parvati Chaudhary had changed parties in those days. Both had joined RJD from Samata Party. As a result his son got the post of minister. Samata Party members did not like this, so Samata Party leaders Raghunath Jha and P.K. Sinha wrote to the then Governor Justice B.M. Lal and state Chief Electoral Officer A.K. A petition was filed to Basu saying that Choudhary has not turned 25 years of age, hence he does not fulfill the conditions to become a minister. BM Lal had directed AK Basu to investigate the matter and submit a report within 25 days. Lal later retired. When the acting Governor arrived, he ordered AK Basu to submit his report by 5 November. Basu prepared the report and submitted it to the Governor. India Today’s 1999 report itself states that in the report submitted to the Governor, it was written that ‘Rakesh Chaudhary alias Samrat Chaudhary did not cooperate in the investigation. Also, he failed to prove that he was of age to become a minister i.e. 25 years.

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Interestingly, Lalu-Rabri had understood that a new political uproar was about to happen. It was 15th November, just a day before the dismissal. The Chief Minister and former Chief Minister reached Raj Bhavan, met Governor Suraj Bhan. Both of them put forth the matter before the Governor that they should make a formal request to remove Rakesh Chaudhary from the post of minister, on which the government would take a decision, but the very next day of the meeting, the Governor issued a formal notification and dismissed their minister.

How old is the emperor?

We extracted three election affidavits of Samrat Chaudhary. First of all, let’s talk about 2005 Bihar Assembly elections. RJD gave ticket to Samrat Chaudhary from Parbatta seat but in the 2005 election affidavit, Samrat writes his name as Rakesh Kumar. There is no mention of Samrat’s name in the affidavit and in the same paper he states his age as 26 years. In this sense, when he lost his ministerial post in 1999, he would have been around 20 years old.

Now let’s talk about 2010. In 2010, he was contesting elections from Parbatta seat of Khagaria district. Affidavit submitted before the elections, in which the name is written – Samrat Chaudhary alias Rakesh Kumar. In this he states his age as 28 years. Note that in 2010, Samrat was describing himself as 28 years old. If compared with the affidavit of 2005, Samrat’s age should have been 31 years in 2010 but he writes 28 years, which means either the information of 2005 or 2010 was wrong. Secondly, in this context, his age in 1999 would have been around 17 to 18 years, which was about 8 years less than the age when he became a minister, and secondly, at that time he was celebrating his 31st birthday, i.e. 3 years ahead of his age in 2010.

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Now let’s talk about 2020. By then Samrat Chaudhary had joined BJP. The party made him MLC in 2020 i.e. sent him to the Legislative Council. Here also he submitted an affidavit. In this affidavit, his name is found only as Samrat Chaudhary, he does not write alias Rakesh Kumar. In this paper, he gives his age as 51 years. That means the emperor who was 28 years old in 2010, did not turn 38 years old in 2020 but turned 51 years old. In a span of 10 years his age increased by 23 years.

Question on degree also

Questions are being raised on Samrat Chaudhary not only about his age but also about his education. Be it 2005 or 2010. Both the times in the election documents, Samrat Choudhary has mentioned his highest education as 7th pass, but after 10 years i.e. in the affidavit of 2020, the details are found changed in the education column. In 2020, Chaudhary has written that he has Doctor of Litt. Has degree. That too from America’s California Public University, but is there any university of this name in America? After a lot of research on the internet, we found out that there is an institution called California Public University, but it is a non-traditional and autonomous university which runs on the model of distance education. If you go to the university website and click on the study programs section, the names of different departments will be visible. One of these is Arts and Humanities. By entering this box, it will be known that both Doctor of Letters (D.Litt) and Doctor of Literature (D.Litt) courses are run in the university. However, the Emperor’s affidavit does not reveal that he had the degree of Doctor of Litt. Which one is it? The one with letters or literature. Now let us take some information about D.Litt. Then we will come to an important question which arises from the education timeline of the Deputy CM of Bihar.

Doctor of Litt. An honorary degree awarded for distinguished contributions to the humanities, literature, philosophy, or history. Suppose someone has done some excellent work in literature, then a top class university gives him the honorary degree of D.Litt. This means that one does not have to take any admission to study for this degree. Generally it is available after PhD. It is popular in the world of academics but the condition is that the candidate has done some tremendous work. Now the question is, how did Samrat Choudhary, who was claiming to be 7th pass till 2010, complete matriculation, inter, graduation, post graduation and even PhD in just 10 years? Had he taken admission in 8th class after submitting the affidavit in 2010 itself? Even if he had taken it and he was passing every year, he would still have been able to complete post graduation in 10 years. Matriculation in 3 years, Intermediate in 2 years, Graduation in 3 years and Post Graduation in 2 years. Total sum becomes 10. So did he write such a research paper during post graduation itself that he got the certificate of D.Litt?

Also read: Samrat Chaudhary becomes the new CM of Bihar, Bihar repeats history after 74 years

Samrat Choudhary will also get trapped in familyism

The biggest weapon used against RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, the main opponent of BJP or JDU in Bihar, is that he is a product of familyism. When Nitish Kumar used to make this allegation, RJD had no answer. BJP also used to actively attack Tejashwi Yadav and RJD on this issue. Now BJP has made Samrat Chaudhary the Chief Minister, whose first major identity is that he is the son of Shakuni Chaudhary. Not only this, Samrat Chaudhary himself is about to leave from the same RJD which is now his main opposition party.

In such a situation, it remains to be seen how much and how Samrat Choudhary answers these questions while working as Chief Minister. Also, it has to be seen how comfortable he remains when answers to these questions are asked by the opposition.