NEW DELHI: Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) founder Prashant Kishor has finally found a seat for his “school bag” in Bihar. The election strategist-turned-politician has flipped the Bankipur assembly seat, an unassailable bastion of the BJP for the last 30 years. Before today’s shock defeat, the BJP had registered 8 consecutive victories in Bankipur since 1995, when it won the seat for the first time.By-election in Bankipur was necessitated after Nitin Nabin resigned as BJP MLA from the seat in April after his election to Rajya Sabha. This followed Nitin Nabin’s elevation as BJP national president in January this year.To gauge the enormity of Prashant Kishor’s victory, look at these facts:
- BJP has held Bankipur assembly seat from 1995 (Till 2005, the seat was known as Patna West)
- BJP chief Nitin Nabin won from the Bankipur assembly seat four times in a row
- Nitin Nabin won from Bankipur for first time in 2010 with a margin of 56%
- From 1995 to 2010, the seat (known as Patna West) was represented by Navin Kishore Prasad Sinha (Nitin Nabin’s father)
- Father-son duo has won the seat 8 consecutive times
For PK, as Prashant Kishor is popularly known, contesting the Bankipur byelection was a huge political gamble. PK, who made a high-pitched entry into Bihar politics with a padyatra spanning months ahead of the 2025 assembly elections, cut a sorry figure when his Jan Suraj Party failed to win even one seat less than a year ago. Such dismal was his first electoral show that JSP lost deposit in 236 of the 238 seats it contested. Prashant Kishor did not contest the election himself and instead led a high-voltage campaign for his party across the state.Little wonder his decision to contest the Bankipur bypoll was fraught with the danger of becoming a make-or-break political move. But the gamble has paid off and Prashant Kishor with his debut win has propelled into the centrestage of Bihar politics.
‘Bankipur’s message to BJP central leadership’
Prashant Kishor polled over 64,151 votes and won the key electoral battle by a margin of 19,324 votes over BJP’s Neeraj Kumar. Prashant Kishor’s resounding success, nine months after his party’s humiliating defeat, marks a remarkable turnaround.And making the most of his victory, Prashant Kishor immediately trained his guns at Bihar chief minister Samrat Choudhary.“This is the victory of the people of Bankipur. As we stated during the election campaign, this was not just an election to choose an MLA. It was an attempt by the people of Bihar to send a message to the BJP’s central leadership that they should appoint a good person as the chief minister of Bihar. They do not want a person with a criminal background or questionable conduct, character, or reputation to lead Bihar. They want a good chief minister who can improve education, create employment opportunities for the youth, and ensure that the children of Bihar do not have to migrate elsewhere for work,” Kishor told reporters as his supporters celebrated his maiden electoral victory.
Prashant Kishor hits out at Bihar CM
Prashant Kishor’s use of his victory to target Samrat Choudhary did not come as a surprise. Ksihor been unrelenting in his attacks against the BJP leader ever since the election strategist became a full-time politician. He has targeted Samrat Choudhary over the chief minister’s educational qualification and his alleged criminal past.
Kishor’s development pitch or disappointment against BJP?
The Jan Suraaj chief also called upon the BJP’s central leadership to focus on governance ahead of the next Lok Sabha elections, stating, “Before the Lok Sabha elections, Prime Minister Modi, the BJP, and Amit Shah should focus on improving Bihar, creating jobs for its youth, and stopping migration. That is our only objective. We do not want to become MLAs merely to award contracts. Our sole objective is the development of Bihar.“These are the very themes on which Prashant Kishor fought the 2025 assembly elections and lost. Clearly, while he keeps focus on these issues, his victory in bankipur may less be about endorsement of his development focus and more about people’s disappointment with the BJP. The result is also perhaps a fallout of the students’ agitation against NEET-UG paper leak, which saw huge protests in Bihar. In Siwan, a police constable was suspended after a video purportedly showing him using an AK-47 rifle during a student protest on July 25 went viral on social media.Leader of opposition in Bihar assembly, Tejashwi Yadav, slammed Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary for the incident. He posted a video of the purported incident on X and, along with it, said, “During the protest in Siwan, police resorted to direct firing with an AK-47 on students. When a criminal becomes chief minister, then police fire bullets at innocent students.”
‘Verdict by Bihar’s youth against BJP’
CPI(ML) Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya in his message to Prashant Kishor described his victory as a significant verdict by Bihar’s youth against the BJP-led state government.In a post on X, Bhattacharya termed Kishor’s victory a “well-earned debut victory” and said the bypoll result reflected public anger against the ruling dispensation.“Congratulations to Prashant Kishor on his well-earned debut victory in Bankipur bypoll. Kudos to the youth of Bihar for delivering such a telling blow to the supremely arrogant, incompetent and tyrannical BJP government of Bihar,” he said.
Shock verdict for BJP
The BJP was quick to accept the verdict of the people. 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”.But for the BJP, this defeat comes as an embarrassment for both its national president Nitin Nabin and the party’s first chief minister in the state Samrat Choudhary. Bankipur seat was literally a personal fiefdom of Nitin Nabin’s family which represented the constituency for 30 long years. A defeat in the backyard will surely embarrass the BJP chief.For Samrat Choudhary, this was the first electoral test of his government which was formed after the BJP took over the reins of the state from JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar. It was Nitish Kumar who had led the NDA to an emphatic triumph in the 2025 assembly elections. And the BJP would have hoped that Samrat Choudhary would have given it a winning start. But that was not to be.
Lalu’s RJD pushed to fringes
The Bankipur bypoll result also has a worrying message for the main opposition party RJD. Tejashwi Yadav’s party seems to have learnt no lessons from the 2025 electoral drubbing. The party which has been reduced to 25 seats in the assembly did little to show intent on the ground.
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Its candidate Rekha Kumari polled just 14,273 votes. This was over 32,000 votes less than the figure of 46,363, which she had polled in the 2025 assembly elections as the runnerup in the seat. Ironically, for the greater part of the campaign, RJD’s star campaigner Tejashwi Yadav was missing in action.
Time to pause, review
It may not be prudent to overexaggerate the outcome of one bypoll. The result of one seat, even though high-profile, may not be indicative of any larger trend. But for the BJP and the RJD to brush aside the defeat as a one-off setback would be doing harm to their cause. The BJP should remember that it rules Bihar but is still dependent on its allies for survival. The RJD, meanwhile, remains the main opposition party but seems to have lost the plot to factionalism and family feuds after its dismal 2025 show. Both need to pause and review what went wrong in Bankipur. MLA Prashant Kishor, on the other hand, will perhaps be now preparing for another bout with his political bete noir Samrat Choudhary – this time on the floor of Bihar assembly.
