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.
Patna | Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor on Monday rejected possibilities of joining any political alliance, and claimed that his victory in the Bankipur assembly bypoll was made possible “with backing of” disgruntled supporters of BJP, Congress and RJD, while Gen Z protests may also have played a role.
Kishor, who wrested the BJP stronghold on his electoral debut, also claimed that the vote was “essentially against" Bihar Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary.
The Jan Suraaj Party leader was talking to reporters after defeating the BJP’s Neeraj Kumar by over 19,000 votes in Bankipur which the BJP had been winning since 1995.
“We shall have no alliance. Our alliance shall be with the people of Bihar. You should see that the people of Bankipur have voted for us, giving up on established parties,” said Kishor when he was asked about the possibility of a rethink on his earlier stance of going it alone in elections.
He said he would not make tall promises like converting Bankipur into Bengaluru, but as an MLA, he would try to improve things, and changes will be there for all to see in a few months.
With his victory, the Jan Suraaj Party, which has been accused of being a “B team of BJP”, will have its maiden presence in the Bihar assembly.
“I would like to thank my active supporters as well as those who backed me in the by-election, despite not being with Jan Suraaj. I received support from people in BJP, Congress and RJD, who were unhappy with the state of affairs in their party,” Kishor said.
The former poll strategist whose fledgling outfit had drawn a blank in last year’s assembly election also said that the "atmosphere created by Gen Z protests" might have played a role in Tuesday's poll result.
"But there is nothing to show that young electors had voted in large numbers in Bankipur. It is unfortunate, but that is the reality,” said Kishor, referring to the less than 35 per cent turnout of July 30, the polling day.
The IPAC founder, who gave up political consultancy in 2021, said the mandate is essentially against Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary, "against whom I have nothing personal, but who is detested by educated people of Bihar because of criminal antecedents and lack of qualifications”.
Notably, the by-poll, which Kishor has been terming as a “referendum” on the BJP-led government in Bihar, had followed the resignation of fifth-term MLA Nitin Nabin, who got elected to the Rajya Sabha after becoming the party’s national president.
The electoral verdict in Bankipur is a wake-up call for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he claimed, adding that if Choudhary was chosen because he belongs to the numerically significant Kushwaha community, let him be replaced with someone with the same caste but with a "cleaner background".
On his part, Choudhary, who had joined the BJP less than a decade ago and became its first leader to head a government in Bihar, came out with a magnanimous post on his X handle, congratulating Kishor on his victory in “the grand festival of democracy”.
A senior BJP leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, “Prashant Kishor struck all the right notes. He tapped into the growing dissatisfaction among the upper castes by raising issues like the death after suspected rape of a NEET aspirant and the police encounter of Bharat Tiwari”.
Comments of party leaders like Ravi Shankar Prasad also made the matter worse, he said, alluding to a remark by Patna Sahib MP that Bankipur was a seat which “we can win even if a dog or a cat was fielded as the BJP candidate”.
The BJP leader also said the debacle could not have come at a worse time.
He said, "The Gen Z protests highlighted our weakening support among the youth, especially the upper castes, who have been our core base. They had been unhappy over the controversial UGC regulations and, now, they have begun to feel that we are taking them for granted”.
Although the INDIA bloc partners stopped short of congratulating Kishor, they were unanimous in hailing his victory as “the defeat of the BJP”.
“It is an emphatic victory against the BJP. In the backdrop of Jantar Mantar protests, it does indicate a welcome shift in public mood,” said Dipankar Bhattacharya, general secretary of CPI(ML) Liberation, to which AISA, an active participant in the Cockroach Janata Party-led movement, is affiliated.
Congress spokesperson Suman Kumar Mallick said the people of Bankipur have given a clear message against the arrogance of power and an autocracy.
"If Parliamentary elections are held today, Modi government will definitely be voted out,” Mallick said.
RJD spokesperson Chitaranjan Gagan, whose party’s candidate Rekha Gupta finished third in the by-poll, said more important than who won is the fact that the BJP lost.
"We are not dejected and will work with renewed vigour to ensure the overthrow of the NDA from Bihar as well as the Centre,” he said.
Veteran socialist leader Shivanand Tiwary told PTI: “Prashant Kishor’s energy and organisational abilities have been there for all to see. The INDIA bloc must approach him. The victory in Bankipur must be viewed in a larger perspective”.
Tiwary, who was one of the foremost participants in the “Bihar movement” launched by the late Jayaparakash Narayan, said, “What we saw recently, at Jantar Mantar, across Bihar and in other parts of the country, was far more spectacular than what took place in 1974. Students’ activists of today are showing a far superior acumen than what was on display in our times”.
Patna | Voters in the Bankipur Assembly bypoll found Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar on the EVM, but they were not Bihar's veteran leaders. Their namesakes, contesting as independents, failed to cross the 150-vote mark and lost their deposits.
While the spotlight was on Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor breaching the BJP bastion with 64,151 votes, Independent candidate Lalu Prasad Yadav could garner just 81, a vote share of 0.06 per cent.
Another Independent candidate, Nitish Kumar, fared a bit better with 149 votes, which amounted to 0.11 per cent of the total votes polled.
Both lost their security deposits as the Election Commission regulations stipulate that candidates failing to secure a minimum of one-sixth of the total valid votes polled would have their deposits redirected to the treasury.
A total of 25 candidates were in the fray for the hotly contested seat, including eight Independents.
Kishor created history on his electoral debut when he defeated Neeraj 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".
The celebrated poll strategist won by a margin of 19,324 votes.
For the bypoll, necessitated by the resignation of BJP chief Nitin Nabin after his elevation to the Rajya Sabha, the RJD had reposed its faith in Rekha Gupta.
She had lost to Nabin by more than 50,000 votes in the 2025 Assembly election. This time, she lost after garnering 14,273 votes.
The constituency, with nearly 3.8 lakh voters, recorded a turnout of 34.30 per cent in polling held on July 30, significantly lower than the 41.45 per cent turnout recorded during the 2025 Assembly election.
