In a major reversal since the Bihar elections in 2025, Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) founder and candidate Prashant Kishor on Monday won the Bankipur Assembly seat in the by-elections.
The political strategist-turned-politician, who won over the BJP's Neeraj Kumar Sinha with more than 63,000 votes—a massive margin of more than 19,000 votes—has also won the larger prestige battle, as the seat has remained with the saffron party since 1995 and was most recently vacated by the party's national president, Nitin Nabin.
What adds to the victory is the fact that the JSP is no heavyweight, and had actually lost all 238 of the state's 243 seats in the 2025 Assembly elections in Bihar. Here are five reasons why Kishor turned the 2026 by-polls on their head:
Changing candidates after nomination
The BJP had initially nominated Abhishek Bunty as its candidate in the by-elections, in a ceremony attended by people like Bihar CM Samrat Chaudhary and state BJP chief Sanjay Saraogi.
However, just a day after filing his nomination, Bunty withdrew from the poll battle, citing personal reasons, which led to speculations that he was linked to a fodder scam, and was removed because the party feared that the Opposition might later make it an issue.
This led to Sinha coming into the fray, which sent the wrong message, which could have had an adverse effect.
The CJP protests
While the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protests in Delhi—and their follow-up protests in places like Bihar and West Bengal—saw the saffron party receive widespread criticism over how student protesters and volunteers were handled, there is a smaller, linked reason why the whole issue affected the party's optics.
Notably, the protests saw the sons and daughters of certain BJP leaders differ from their parents and support the CJP, as in the case of Archita Sachin Rahar, the daughter of BJP MP Aparajita Sarangi, and Yashaswinee Raje Singh, the daughter of BJP MLA Vikram Singh.
The PK factor
The entry of Prashant Kishor into the electoral fray for Bankipur also upped the ante, as the by-election was suddenly transformed into a high-stakes battle between an underdog and a giant that has held the seat for decades.
This is because his positive campaigning during both the 2025 polls and the Bankipur by-elections, in addition to his political strategising, which led him to make a viral prediction about C. Joseph Vijay becoming the CM of Tamil Nadu long before 2026.
Low voter turnout
An NDTV India report noted that the BJP had failed to reach out to people at the grassroots level with door-to-door campaigns, perhaps considering that the Bankipur seat would be an easy one.
This reportedly led to low voter turnout in the by-elections, which further helped Prashant Kishor's case, as he took door-to-door campaigns seriously, and also capitalised on the anti-incumbency wave in the seat.
Scattered RJD vote bank
The RJD's Rekha Kumari, who finished second from the Bankipur seat in the 2025 polls with 46,363 votes, is now slipping from second to third, as the party slowly loses its grip over the seat.
This can be attributed to a mix of factors, such as the shift of its key Muslim and Yadav voter bases, Tejashwi Yadav's late entry into the 2025 campaign, and the absence of senior RJD leaders from the campaign trail.
