First time MP: ‘I practised the oath so that I don’t stumble’
An alumna of LSR and Delhi School of Economics, Shambhavi Choudhury was a director in a Patna school for a few years.
Shambhavi Choudhury first moved to the Capital in the spring of 2016 as a bright-eyed 18-year-old from Patna. As an undergraduate student of sociology, Choudhury spent three years shuttling between her paying guest accommodation and the leafy campus of Lady Shri Ram College in south Delhi. “I did everything a girl in DU has to do – splitting bills, hopping between cafes in GK1, fighting over plates of momos – all in the middle of two hour class breaks,” she said. “And being late to the next class.”
This week, Choudhury returned to Delhi as the first woman parliamentarian from Samastipur, Bihar, taking her place in India’s Parliament as one of its youngest members. “It was overwhelming – surreal, nervy and exciting at the same time. I must have practised the oath before the mirror 500 times so that I don’t stumble,” she said, walking up the steps of the new Parliament building into its cavernous main chamber.
In some ways, her maiden victory from the impoverished town was the culmination of her political bequest as the third generation scion of a political family. And yet, her victory underlined a raft of other social shifts – a woman victor in a region dominated by male satraps, a young, articulate leader from the Dalit community from a seat once held by the venerable Paswan family and Bharat Ratna Karpoori Thakur, and an educated face representing an area abandoned by thousands of young people every year in search of low-paying labour jobs.
Her challenge – change all that, and fast. Assembly elections in Bihar are due next year.
Choudhury’s entry into politics was smoothened by her gilded legacy. Her father, Ashok Choudhury, is a sitting minister in Bihar and considered a close aide of chief minister Nitish Kumar. Her grandfather Mahavir Choudhury was a senior Congress leader, and her father-in-law is former IPS officer Kishore Kunal, who once was part of the mediating team in the Ayodhya title dispute.
After LSR and a Master’s at the Delhi School of Economics, Choudhary worked as a director in a school in Patna for some years. During the pandemic, though, she and her husband Saayan Kunal started growing closer to LJP (RV) chief Chirag Paswan.
It was an important moment. Paswan was arguably at the nadir of his political career, having barely withstood an internal rebellion by his uncle Pashupati Paras who broke the party and became a Union minister. Fighting for his father’s legacy after having lost the symbol and party name, Paswan only had 15-20 leaders on his side at the time. “When I moved to Delhi in 2019, I used to meet him often, but we only seriously started talking after 2021. Even then, I was struck by his patience. It showed me that voter bases cannot be stolen,” she said. “He never lost faith.”
Paswan secured his first victory when his party was allotted five seats by the NDA, against none for Paras. Then, he cemented his stature by winning every single one – a strike rate of 100% that ended the legacy dispute in more conclusive ways than similar battles in the Shiv Sena and Nationalist Congress Party in Maharashtra.
Key to that strategy was Samastipur. Held earlier by Paswan’s cousin Prince Raj, the seat held an emotional connotation for the state’s Dalit population, the LJP’s main vote base. And unlike many other leaders from her generation, Choudhury was not alien to the dynamics of caste. “I obviously knew of the enormity of the seat; I was a Pasi, entering a seat held by Paswans. Pasis come under Mahadalit, who usually don’t get a lot of representation. So that was important too,” she said.
Her father was in the JD(U) but she joined the LJP (RV) months before the general elections. “There were rumours of a strife but it was all false. Dad was there for 45 days in the campaign, leaving everything,” she said.
In Samastipur, where 70% of the population lives in villages and per capita income is a sixth of the national average, the battle was between the scions of two political families – Choudhury facing off against the Congress’s Sunny Hazari, the son of sitting JD(U) minister Maheshwar Hazari. “My father taught me the importance of three Ps – presence, politeness, perception. These are everything for a politician. It helped me in the campaign.”
After getting allotted five seats, Paswan gambled on fielding fresh faces as part of a generational switch in a party where many senior leaders had left during the rebellion. In Samastipur, Choudhury suddenly found herself in villages and hamlets where no women had ever been allowed access to public spaces, let alone seek votes.
“For the first 2-3 days, people may have thought she’s a woman or too young. Some would even prefer to talk to my husband but I’d interrupt them and ask them to talk to me. I’d tell them I’ll be the boss,” she said.
“People only thought that the father and the husband would have the power. But I knew it will take time for society to adjust.”
Choudhury quickly found out that her two perceived weaknesses could also become her biggest strengths. Her young campaign found innovative ways to overcome the LJP’s biggest hurdle – making rural people aware of their poll symbol of helicopter, and make them not vote for the old symbol of bungalow. “We have ludo games for village children with my name and symbol. We did street plays, mini concerts, and connected the helicopter to both Modi ji and Ram Vilas ji,” she said.
And her womanhood helped her forge a bond with the local women who were used to being overlooked by male candidates. “Women know what’s going on with us. They talk more freely. Male candidates would often meet important men of the village and leave. But I met mothers and sisters inside the homes,” she said.
“An old lady just held my face in the middle of the campaign one day and started crying because she had never seen a candidate come to her remote village.”
Her challenges are many. Despite decades of being at the centre of Bihar politics, Samastipur is still a migration sink with farm incomes dipping and infrastructure crumbling. “Samastipur is almost untouched by development…we have a 20-year demand for the construction of a road overbridge (ROB),” said Amit Gunjan, 53, a businessman.
“Another is construction of a bypass road for those travelling to adjoining districts such as Darbhanga or Rosera. Presently, all such people have to drive through the maze of traffic in the middle of Samastipur town,” he added.
Ensuring quality and continuous power supply, piped water to households and laying of proper drainage are among key civic issues, said Ranjit Kumar Singh, 51, a practising advocate in the Samastipur court.
Rajesh Jha, 37, a youth leader of the LJP (RV), said upgrading education and health facilities, besides upholding farmers’ interest, are high up on the party’s goals. “Having voted for Prince Raj, people were disappointed because he was never around when needed most,” he said.
Choudhury straddles many worlds – a suave leader for one of the most impoverished regions of India, a devotee of Shiva and Shakti who is also a scholar of Dr BR Ambedkar, and a woman conscious of caste and her Dalit identity but aiming to break the mould. “I cannot deny the fact that I am a Dalit woman who is in politics. Other women from my strata might not have this privilege,” she said. “So when I speak in Parliament, it’ll be for Dalit rights and women’s rights.”
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