Message In A Ballot

Kishor’s poll debut on a ‘safe’ saffron seat is sweet victory for his party. Bankipur bypoll will be heeded

Bypolls don’t as such follow any trend, but it is frequently the case that the party in govt in the state, usually retains or wins assembly bypolls, held after a state election. This is even more so, when the same party is in govt at Centre. Of course, the last few years, all poll trends/predictions have come a cropper, with multiple factors at play. Even so, Bihar’s Bankipur was not expected to bowl a googly. BJP was expected to win it comfortably, especially because it is a ‘safe’ saffron seat. The upper-caste dominated constituency, in Nov 2025, elected BJP chief Nitin Nabin, for the fifth consecutive time. That makes the defeat awkward for the saffron party, and certainly, significant. Nabin was elected to Rajya Sabha in April, hence the bypoll.

The winner is Prashant Kishor, whose Jan Suraaj contested 238 assembly seats in Nov 2025 and lost to the point that 236 of his candidates forfeited their deposit. His party statewide won 3% votes. Kishor himself hadn’t contested. Nine months on, it is sweet victory for the poll strategist-turned-political party founder, vindicated in taking the battle to a BJP stronghold in the heartland. This is a big deal. The run-up to Bihar’s polls was fraught, with a hastily rolled out and fractious SIR process. The poll results, a huge win for BJP, cast key ally JDU into the shadows. Nitish relinquished his pride of place. It took BJP almost six months to circle in on Samrat Choudhary as CM this April, even as Nitish Kumar moved with Nabin to RS. This clearly created a political vacuum, into which stepped in the new kid on the block, in an election held on July 30, days after police excesses on protesting students were recorded in Patna on July 25. As BJP unscrambles the message from voters, it will have to keep all the moving parts in Bihar in mind.

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