[3] He is considered to be the Number 2 in JDU's pecking order of the Bihar cabinet and is a member of Nitish Kumar's core committee which shapes policies of the Government and the party.

[6][7] Known for being an efficient administrator and a soft-spoken person with a clean image, he is a close confidante of Nitish Kumar and was speculated to succeed him as Chief Minister of Bihar following the latter's resignation after the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

His father, late Jagdish Prasad Chaudhary, had been a freedom fighter, an Indian National Congress politician and a three term member of the Bihar Legislative Assembly from the Dalsinghsarai constituency.

[13] He completed his Master of Arts in history from Patna University in 1979 and joined the State Bank of India as a Probationary Officer in Trivandrum in the same year.

[14][15][16] He himself won the election from Sarairanjan (Vidhan Sabha constituency) with a margin of 17557 votes and was inducted as the Water Resources Minister in the newly formed cabinet,[17] assuming charge on 26 November 2010.

He was elected unopposed to the post of Speaker of Bihar Legislative Assembly on 2 December 2015 after consensus was generated on his name among all political parties of the state, including the Opposition BJP.

As Water Resources Minister, Chaudhary is credited with the completion of Durgawati Reservoir in 2014, a massive irrigation project started in 1976 which got delayed by 38 years due to land acquisition and environmental clearance related issues.

The Nitish Kumar government, with BJP and other NDA constituents as allies, was the first to move a confidence motion in the Assembly, on 28 July 2017, to prove its majority in the lower House.