With hours remaining for the results of the Bankipur by-election, all eyes are on whether Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party will trounce the BJP in its prestige seat, which was once held by BJP national president Nitin Nabin.
The candidates in the fray are Prashant Kishore of Jan Suraj, Neeraj Kumar Sinha of the BJP, and Rekha Gupta of the RJD.
Though the result of the seat will have no impact on the legislative assembly, political experts believe that the result will have far-reaching implications, as this by-election has taken place against the backdrop of CJP protests and the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan.
Though the voter turnout was significantly low, several surveys and exit polls showed Prashant Kishore's party, Jan Suraaj, ahead. The BJP has not lost an election here since 1995, and the last elections saw Jan Suraaj candidate Vandana Kumari receiving less than 8,000 votes. BJP's Nitin Nabin, who won the elections, got 98,000 votes.
However, political analysts believe that many factors may favour Jan Suraaj. The Bharat Tiwari encounter, the ongoing police repression in several cases in Bihar, the law and order situation, the BJP's conspiracy to sideline the Kurmi caste, the student protests and the lathi charge could have a significant impact on the election results.
If the results don't go in the BJP's favour, it will have a major impact on national politics. This by-election is also the party's first electoral test since Samrat Chaudhary became Bihar's first BJP chief minister in April.
The anxiety is already felt. Jan Suraj has targeted BJP national spokesperson Ajay Alok's press conference. "If Bankipur was your stronghold, fortress, and impenetrable fortress. So why is there so much uneasiness?" Jan Suraj leader and national spokesperson Kumar Saurabh Singh asked. “The fate of Bankipur is in the ballot box. Why are you nervous even after deploying 40 star campaigners, 201 MLAs, 30 MPs, 45 MLCs, 30 ministers, former Union ministers, an army of former honourables and thousands of BJP officials in every street?"
That said, this is a litmus test for Prashant Kishor too. The results could determine whether the organisation he had built through his statewide padayatra could transform into an electoral force. The JSP was formally launched on October 2, 2024, and contested all 243 seats in the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections. The party failed to win a single seat, with its Bankipur candidate securing less than 5% of the vote.
