IN SEARCH OF NEW ALIGNMENTS

Just over a year to go before the general election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seems to have borrowed a leaf out of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's book in anointing Samrat Choudhary, 54, its new state unit president.

- Amitabh Srivastava

Samrat, who took over the office on March 27, comes from the Kushwaha caste, a group belonging to the Other Backward Classes (OBC) that is said to be the second largest after the Yadavs in Bihar's caste pyramid. More significantly, the Kushwahas (or Koeris) are the 'Kush' in Bihar's Luv-Kush bloc (Kurmis being the 'Luv') that is the bedrock of Nitish's social support base.