Can Prashant Kishor be the third force in Bihar?

India Today

03-06-2025

(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated June 9, 2025)It's a Prashant Kishor encore, so none of the mainstream parties had exactly wished for it. The October 2024 birth of Jan Suraaj Party was preceded by a good bit of labour: two full years, about 5,000 km, of pacing up and down the natal ward of Bihar. That hard-earned paternity is now entering its logical phase: the JSP aims to make it good in the coming state election. Prashant ('PK') has hit the ground running—with a rerun. He plans to criss-cross all 243 assembly constituencies before October-November with his 'Bihar badlaw yatra'.advertisementBad law is just about right, as a spot of starting trouble proved. On May 18, under a blistering sun in Nalanda, PK found himself stopped on way to Kalyanbigha, CM Nitish Kumar's ancestral village. 'Yahaan koi British Raj hai jo gaon mein jaane ke liye aapka permission chaahiye?' he was heard fulminating, at a stone-faced SDM and a phalanx of officials. PK's caravan was out to test Nitish's three pledges on his own home turf. Had Rs 2 lakh been really given to each of the 9.4 million low-income families identified in Bihar's caste survey? Had Mahadalits been allotted land? Have land records been digitised and freed from corrupt local babus?In the event, those remained a mystery. PK turned back, and instead held a rally at Biharsharief on May 20 where he formally launched his Yatra 2.0. As his caravan rolls into each village gathering, it unfolds with the same refrain: 'You vote by caste or for 5 kg of grain. When was the last time you considered your children's future? Lalu Yadav is plotting his son's rise; what of yours? For once, look beyond the immediate.' Bihar's villagers, long habituated to transactional voting, listen in rapt silence. Something resonates.advertisement
His vocabulary brims over with the promise of a post-caste politics, but as PK revs up for the hustings, the chess moves he's making show he's not without a keen eye towards the electoral potential of caste. On May 18, he secured the merger of Ramchandra Prasad 'RCP' Singh's Aap Sabki Awaaz Party into JSP. Who's RCP? An ex-bureaucrat and Nitish favourite, once his principal secretary, who leapt to great heights: JD(U) president, Rajya Sabha MP, and towards the end of that 2010-22 phase, even Union steel minister. More crucially, he's a Kurmi from Nalanda, like Nitish.'RCP's entry will fortify our appeal among a key demographic,' admits a JSP insider.
RJD'sTejashwi Yadav
JD(U) chief NitishKumar
NUMERICAL NUANCESSimultaneously, Kishor anointed Uday Singh. Resume: younger brother of the estimable ex-bureaucrat N.K. Singh, resourceful man from a prominent family who was twice BJP MP from Purnea and, after a bitter falling out and detour in the Congress, turned a benevolent patron for JSP in its salad days. Also, a Rajput face—so saffron territory. Counting Manoj Bharti, the Dalit state chief with an IIT/IFS bio, that's three caste boxes ticked. With top-tier lieutenants in place, Kishor can devote himself to the trail, promising governance over identity politics.Numerical nuances frame his strategy as he goes tilting at the nearly four-decade-long RJD-JD(U) duopoly, with the BJP playing the long game. As many as 40 of Bihar's 243 assembly seats had victory margins lower than 3,500 votes in 2020. In November 2024, JSP contested four bypolls and finished third in two seats. In Imamganj, its 37,103 votes ensured the RJD's defeat. Overall, JSP got approximately 10 per cent of the votes. So the sight of PK wading through rice paddies and dusty lanes, talking his new talk in cramped huts and at bustling chaupals, can't be too soothing for the entrenched powers.Subscribe to India Today MagazineMust Watch
advertisement