Chowdhury was born on 2 April 1956 to Niranjan and Saroja Bala Chowdhury at Berhampore in Murshidabad district, West Bengal. He studied at I. C. Institute in Berhampore.[5] Chowdhury married Arpita Chowdhury on 15 September 1987.[6] They had a daughter, Shreyashi, who died in October 2006.[7][8] On 9 January 2019, Arpita died.[9] He later married Atashi C Chowdhury.[5][10]
Chowdhury contested the 1999 Indian general election from Berhampore constituency. He won by a margin of 95,391 votes[12] and defeated his nearest rival, the sitting MP Pramothes Mukherjee of Revolutionary Socialist Party.[14] Following his success, he was made the Congress president for the Murshidabad district.[12] Between 1999 and 2000, he served as a member of Committee on Information Technology, Railway Convention Committee and Committee to Review the Rate of Dividend Payable by the Railway Undertaking to the General Revenues. Between 2000 and 2004, he served as a member of Consultative Committee of the Ministry of External Affairs.[5] In 2003, under Chowdhury's leadership, the Congress party won 23 out of 33 zilla parishad seats, 13 out of 26 panchayat samitis and 104 out of 254 village councils in Murshidabad.[12]
On 28 October 2012 he was inducted in the Union Ministry under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as Minister of State for Railways.[15]
Chowdhury taking charge as the Minister of State for Railways, in New Delhi on 29 October 2012
In June 2019, he was selected as Congress leader in Lok Sabha. According to a report in NDTV, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury was given the job after the party failed to convince Rahul Gandhi.[17]
On 26 July 2019, Chowdhury was appointed the chairman of Seventeenth Lok Sabha Committee on Public Accounts. The Public Accounts Committee is now constituted every year under Rule 308 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in Lok Sabha.[18]
In an electoral upset, Chowdhury faced defeat in the INC's bastion Berhampore by the TMC-fielded former cricketer Yusuf Pathan by more than 85,000 votes in the 2024 Indian general election.[2] Following INC's debacle in West Bengal, Chowdhury resigned as president of WBPCC on 21 June 2024.[3]
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