Patna | Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor on Monday wrested the Bankipur assembly constituency of Bihar, a BJP bastion which the party had never lost since 1995, in a by-poll that was necessitated after its national president Nitin Nabin vacated the seat.

He defeated his nearest BJP rival Neeraj Kumar by a margin of 19,324 votes.

Kishor, a celebrated poll strategist, created history on his electoral debut when he garnered 64,151 votes, over Kumar, a low-key BJP youth wing leader, who was hurriedly fielded by the party after its candidate Abhishek “Bunty” pulled out at the eleventh hour, citing “family reasons.

State BJP president Sanjay Saraogi said in a statement, "We bow before the will of the people. We shall draw lessons from the debacle, unlike our opponents who tend to blame every electoral loss of theirs on EVMs and the Election Commission".

Kishor, 49, who had entered the fray announcing that he saw the by-election as a “referendum” on the BJP-led government in the state, told reporters, “The victory is a wake-up call for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who must install a new chief minister in place of Samrat Choudhary, a man with criminal antecedents”.

Choudhary, who had joined the BJP less than a decade ago, was understood to have been picked up by the top leadership in line with the party’s attempts to win over non-Yadav OBCs in a state where the Mandal churn of the 1990s continues to cast a shadow on the political landscape.

Choudhary succeeded Nitish Kumar, the JD(U) president who hung up his boots after a 20-year tenure as the Chief Minister.

However, Kishor, who had first shot to fame for handling Modi’s Lok Sabha campaign in 2014, was of the view: “Let there be another person from the Kushwaha community as the chief minister if the BJP wants it to be so. But he or she must be a decent person”.

“Bihar cannot be treated as a factory that produces cheap labour. I do not promise that my becoming the MLA will make Bankipur on par with Bengaluru. But, when Gujarat, the home state of Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, is looking forward to having a bullet train, the people of Bihar certainly have a right to expect something better than passenger trains,” said Kishor, amid screams of “Jai Bihar”, the Jan Suraaj Party’s ubiquitous slogan, by supporters who had swarmed the streets.

Notable among those who had turned up at AN College, where counting of votes was done, was Jahnavi Das, the doctor wife of Kishor, who is known to stay away from politics, but had chosen to be by her husband’s side in his moment of glory.

“This victory belongs to the people of Bihar,” said Das, who hails from Assam.

RJD's Rekha Gupta, whom Nabin had defeated by a margin of about 50,000 votes last year, only to give it up a few months later upon election to the Rajya Sabha, finished a distant third, securing 14,273 votes.

A pall of gloom seemed to have descended on the BJP camp. The exuberance on display in the morning, when hundreds of them turned up at a city-based sweets shop to pick up 200 kg of 'laddoos' they had ordered, expecting a certain victory, gave way to shock and despondency as the counting of votes proceeded and the lead enjoyed by Kishor grew almost progressively with every round.

Kishor’s victory was being hailed as "a lesson to the arrogant BJP" even by those outside his party, like Janshakti Janata Dal president Tej Pratap Yadav, the estranged elder son of RJD supremo Lalu Prasad, and CPI(ML) Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, whose party is an INDIA bloc partner.

Polling, which was held on July 30, followed days of intensive campaigning by Kishor as well as the BJP, with both sides repeatedly accusing each other of electoral malpractices and approaching the Election Commission over the issue.

The verdict in Bankipur must be viewed in the backdrop of the wider dissatisfaction with the BJP which recently got reflected in the students' protests, said veteran socialist leader Shivanand Tiwary, who had been one of the foremost participants in the 'JP movement' of the 1970s, and in a political career spanning many decades, has been with parties like RJD and JD(U).

"Of course, credit must also be given to Prashant Kishor, who displayed enormous energy and organisational skills," Tiwary said.

RJD spokesman Chitaranjan Gagan, whose party has often charged Kishor of being “B team of the BJP", came out with a statement expressing delight over the verdict.

“For us, the defeat of the BJP in its stronghold is of greater importance than who won,” said Gagan.

Nabin had won the seat for the fifth consecutive term in November last year and resigned in April this year following his election to the Rajya Sabha.

Jubilation erupted in the Jan Suraaj Party camp, replacing the dejection that had set in after the fledgling outfit drew a blank in Assembly elections held in November last year.

"This is the beginning of a golden age for our party. The verdict is a message to parties and leaders who arrogantly think of constituencies as fiefdoms," said bureaucrat-turned-politician Manoj Bharti, who is the state president of the Jan Suraaj Party.

BJP workers were a picture in contrast, as the exuberance on display in the morning, when hundreds of them turned up at a city-based sweets shop to pick up 200 kg of 'laddoos' they had ordered, expecting a certain victory, gave way to shock and despondency.