Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday officially announced he is going to Rajya Sabha. In a statement issued around 11 am, Kumar thanked the people of Bihar for their support, recounted his tenure as the CM of Bihar and promised he would remain with the people of the state as a member of the upper house.This has now opened doors for a political realignment with the CM’s chair up for grabs and many top ministerial positions likely to be reshuffled.AdvertisementFive names dominate the chatter around Bihar’s post‑Nitish power balance: deputy CM Samrat Chaudhary, Union MoS Home Nityanand Rai, Industry Minister Dilip Jaiswal, Nitish’s son Nishant Kumar and state minister Vijay Kumar Chaudhary.The BJP, now the single‑largest party in the Assembly with 89 MLAs, is expected to push for the CM’s post, using it to deepen its long‑term project of expanding among OBC and EBC blocs where its gains have lagged behind Uttar Pradesh.At the same time, JD(U) is trying to lock in a succession plan by bringing Nitish’s son Nishant formally into government alongside trusted lieutenant Vijay Kumar Chaudhary.AdvertisementIn this emerging arrangement, Samrat Chaudhary, Rai and Jaiswal are seen as the three most plausible BJP chief ministerial faces, while Nishant and Vijay Chaudhary are being spoken of as JD(U)’s claimants for the deputy chief minister’s chairs, designed both to reassure the party’s traditional social base and to manage a delicate leadership transition in an ageing, ailing organisation.Samrat ChaudharyA Koeri-Kushwaha OBC leader from Munger, is currently Bihar’s Deputy CM and Home Minister and heads the BJP legislature party. He began his career with the RJD, became Agriculture Minister in the Rabri Devi government in 1999, and later joined JD(U) before finally crossing over to the BJP, where he rose as state vice‑president, MLC and then state president. In 2014, he engineered a split in the RJD legislature party, underlining his reputation as an organisational tactician. As the BJP’s most prominent OBC face in Bihar and a combative critic of Lalu Prasad and Tejashwi Yadav, he is seen as the frontrunner for CM, symbolising the party’s push to consolidate non‑Yadav OBCs behind it.Nityanand RaiA Yadav from Vaishali district, is Minister of State for Home Affairs in the Union government and one of the BJP’s most senior Bihar leaders. The son of a farmer from Karnpura village near Hajipur, he came into politics through the ABVP in the early 1980s and has long been associated with the Sangh Parivar.He represented Hajipur in the Bihar Assembly continuously from 2000 to 2010, before winning the Ujiarpur Lok Sabha seat for the BJP in 2014, 2019 and 2024. The party has projected him as a Yadav face to erode RJD’s monopoly over that bloc; his elevation as chief minister would signal an aggressive bid to prise away sections of the Yadav vote while retaining upper‑caste and non‑Yadav OBC support.Dilip Kumar JaiswalA Vaishya–Bania community leader from Khagaria’s Usri village, is Bihar’s industries and road construction minister and a three‑time MLC from the Purnea–Araria–Kishanganj graduates constituency. A long‑time BJP treasurer and now two‑term state party president, he has also handled the revenue and land reforms portfolio and heads Mata Gujri Memorial Medical College in Kishanganj, anchoring the party’s traditional Bania–trader vote bank.Credited with steering the organisation through the 2025 assembly elections in which the BJP emerged as the single‑largest party, Jaiswal is central to the NDA’s claim that its industrial push is backed by a consolidating core business community.Nishant KumarThe only son of Nitish Kumar and Manju Sinha, he was born in 1975 and trained as a software engineer at BIT Mesra after schooling in Patna and Mussoorie. Long described as politically disinterested and inclined towards spirituality, he stayed out of public life for years, emerging only occasionally at family or commemorative events.Since 2025, he has appeared more frequently alongside his father, speaking at functions in Bakhtiyarpur, attending party events and urging support for JD(U), fuelling speculation about a carefully managed political debut. Party leaders now openly pitch him as future hope for JD(U), and his likely installation as deputy chief minister is read as Nitish’s succession move to stabilise the party, reassure its core Kurmi–OBC base and institutionalise family leadership despite his long‑stated reservations about dynastic politics.Vijay Kumar Chaudharyyou may likeA Bhumihar from Dalsinghsarai in Samastipur, he has been a legislator almost continuously since 1982 and is among Nitish Kumar’s closest lieutenants. The son of freedom‑fighter and three‑time Congress MLA Jagdish Prasad Chaudhary, he left a probationary officer’s job in the State Bank of India to contest his late father’s seat, winning three times on a Congress ticket before later joining JD(U).Within JD(U) he has served as state president, Speaker of the Assembly and Cabinet minister, holding key portfolios like Finance, Education, Water Resources and Parliamentary Affairs, and is widely regarded as “number two” in the party and part of Nitish’s core strategic circle.A deputy chief ministership for him would reward his long administrative experience, anchor upper‑caste support within JD(U), and balance the generational leap represented by Nishant’s rise.