Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) may have drawn a blank in the seat tally in the Bihar assembly elections last year — with a notable 3.4% total vote share across all seats nonetheless — but he is now hoping to make a big splash in a bypoll to the Bankipur seat. The seat has been vacated by the BJP’s Nitin Nabin, who got elected to the Rajya Sabha as he moved to Delhi to become the national president of the party.
Claiming that the Bankipur assembly bypoll would be a “referendum on the first year of the ruling NDA” after its big win in 2025, Kishor told reporters in Patna, “The Jan Suraaj Party has decided, in principle, to contest the bypoll to the Bankipur seat. It will be held by the time the NDA (BJP, JD(U) and allies) would have completed seven to eight months in power.”
Nabin, who became the BJP president in January this year, had defeated his nearest RJD rival in Bankipur by a large margin of over 50,000 votes. The Jan Suraaj Party candidate had finished third. Nabin gave up the seat last month upon getting elected to the Rajya Sabha. A bypoll has to be conducted within six months.
Kishor evaded a direct reply on whether he could be the JSP’s Bankipur candidate in that bypoll.
He also dismissed rumours of a rift with Uday Singh, the Jan Suraaj Party’s national president, whose house he recently vacated to shift to an ashram on the outskirts of Patna and who has since announced a “one-year break from active politics”.
‘Referendum on NDA’ coming up
Bankipur has been a BJP stronghold for decades and Nabin, who made his debut from the seat in 2006 in a bypoll necessitated by his father Nabin Kishor Prasad Sinha’s death, retained the seat for a fifth consecutive term in assembly polls late last year.
“Only the Jan Suraaj Party can defeat the BJP in Bankipur,” said Kishor, who turned to fulltime politics after a career as a star political strategist who once worked with PM Narendra Modi and later with his arch nemesis Congress among other clients of his firm I-PAC. Though he says he’s quit I-PAC, Kishor recently met Maharashtra deputy CM Sunetra Pawar, whose NCP is an ally of the BJP in the western state.
On Bankipur, Kishor further said as per news agency PTI, “The RJD and the Congress have been losing the seat by massive margins. Our party believes we just need to field a strong candidate.”
To a pointed query on whether he could be that candidate, the Jan Suraaj Party founder said, “It is a decision for the party to take.”
He had not contested the assembly polls either. “I did not contest then because the party felt I should concentrate on organisational work. I shall continue to abide by the party’s collective decision,” he added.
Kishor had, ahead of the assembly polls, indicated that he was willing to challenge RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav on his home turf of Raghopur. There was political analysis that his decision to not contest at all had demoralised the cadres of his party.
However, the 47-year-old insisted that “not all people who play a role in building a political party contest polls”. He argued, “Jan Suraaj Party has been nurtured with blood, sweat and tears of millions of dedicated workers, out of whom less than 250 got tickets, since there are only 243 assembly seats”.
On Uday Singh and JSP’s future
On the reported rift with Uday Singh, the Jan Suraaj Party founder said, “Uday Singh is like a brother to me, besides being a senior party colleague. He continues to be our national president. We respect his wish to take a break for a year.”
On the shift, he said, “I had taken the decision to build an ashram for myself long ago after I spent days introspecting at Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram in Champaran, after our party’s dismal show in assembly elections.”
Kishor also slammed the Samrat Choudhary-led government in Bihar for the recent cane-charge on job aspirants who were protesting the delay in notification of teachers’ recruitment examinations.
