Prashant Kishor set for landmark win in BJP bastion Bankipur bypoll

Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor was on course for a landmark victory in the Bankipur assembly bypoll on Monday, 3 August, opening up a commanding lead in the BJP stronghold where voting was necessitated after party president Nitin Nabin vacated the seat.

Making his electoral debut, the noted poll strategist led BJP candidate Neeraj Kumar Sinha from the opening round of counting and was ahead by 15,864 votes after 26 of the 31 rounds.

The lead triggered celebrations in the Jan Suraaj Party camp, marking a dramatic turnaround after the fledgling outfit failed to win a single seat in the Assembly elections held in November last year.

"This is the beginning of a golden age for our party," state president and former bureaucrat Manoj Bharti said. "In a democracy, the will of the people is supreme. The verdict is a message to parties and leaders who arrogantly think of constituencies as fiefdoms."

RJD candidate Rekha Gupta, whom Nabin had defeated by around 50,000 votes in last year's Assembly polls before resigning the seat following his election to the Rajya Sabha, was trailing in third place.

The mood in the BJP camp stood in sharp contrast. The optimism that marked the morning — when hundreds of workers gathered at a sweets shop in Patna to collect 200 kg of laddoos ordered in anticipation of victory — gave way to shock and disappointment as counting progressed.

Kishor, who had stayed away from contesting the Assembly elections last year, described the bypoll as a "referendum" on the BJP-led government in Bihar. He had also claimed that a victory would force chief minister Samrat Choudhary, the BJP's first chief minister in the state, to resign.

His impending victory drew praise even from leaders outside his party. Janshakti Janata Dal president Tej Pratap Yadav, the estranged elder son of RJD chief Lalu Prasad, and CPI(ML) Liberation general-secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya described the result as "a lesson to the arrogant BJP".

The 30 July bypoll followed an intense campaign dominated by allegations of electoral malpractice, with both the BJP and Jan Suraaj approaching the Election Commission against each other.

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

Tiwary, a prominent participant in the JP movement of the 1970s, has had a political career spanning several decades with parties including the RJD and JD(U).

With PTI inputs