Political strategist turned politician Prashant Kishor will contest the July 30 by-election to Patna’s Bankipur Assembly seat, making his electoral debut months after his Jan Suraaj Party drew a blank in last year’s Bihar elections.
Nitin Nabin, the newly appointed BJP national president, had won the Bankipur seat — a BJP citadel for three decades — but vacated it after being elected to the Rajya Sabha.
Accepting his nomination, Kishor thanked his party and said that contesting the by-election was “a step” towards his party’s larger mission of bringing about political change in Bihar. “For the past four years, Jan Suraaj has been my life, and for the next 10 years, until the vision of change in Bihar is achieved, I have no other purpose,” he said.
Kishor, popularly “PK”, had ahead of last year’s Assembly elections projected himself as a crusader against corruption and “dynasty politics”, repeatedly targeting RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav and indicating he would contest from the Yadav family bastion of Raghopur.
He had, however, pulled back at the last moment saying he needed to campaign across Bihar rather than confine himself to a single constituency.
Despite generating much curiosity and excitement, Kishor’s political debut had proved underwhelming. Jan Suraaj contested 238 of Bihar’s 243 Assembly seats but failed to win even one, securing a measly 3.44 per cent vote share. Many of its candidates forfeited their deposits.
The Nitish Kumar-led NDA won an overwhelming majority, with principal challenger RJD restricted to just 25 seats.
Kishor acknowledged the setback but said many of his supporters believed that a victory in Bankipur would “strengthen the movement” and “revive the vision of change in Bihar”.
He later sought to frame the by-election as a referendum on the performance of the government of Bihar’s first BJP chief minister, Samrat Choudhary, who succeeded Nitish in April.
“If the BJP wins, I will have no hesitation in conceding that they continue to enjoy public support. If we win, it shall be for them to read the writing on the wall,” Kishore told reporters.
Bankipur was born out of the erstwhile Patna West constituency in 2008 following delimitation. Nabin’s father Navin Kishore Sinha had held Patna West from 1995 till 2006, to be replaced by Nabin who went on to win four further Bankipur elections between 2010 and 2025.
Kishor rejected the perception of Bankipur as a BJP stronghold.
“It’s not anyone’s stronghold; it’s the stronghold of the people of Bihar,” he said, urging voters to back “the candidate who represents the start of this new politics”.
The BJP, which is yet to name its candidate, said Kishor’s entry would make little difference.
“Whether Prashant Kishor contests or anyone else contests, it will make no difference,” former Union minister Shahnawaz Hussain said.
