'People rejected you': Supreme Court junks Prashant Kishor-led Jan Suraaj plea challenging Bihar elections

The Supreme Court came down heavily on the Jan Suraaj Party while refusing to hear the petition.

• Supreme Court rejected plea to annul Bihar polls over welfare scheme misuse claims.
• Court dismisses Jan Suraj Party's plea; advises approaching relevant high court.
• Court to examine issue of freebies but questioned petitioner's bona fides

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The Supreme Court on Friday came down heavily on the Prashant Kishor-led Jan Suraj Party while refusing to entertain a plea seeking to declare the Bihar elections held last year null and void.

The plea alleged misuse of a state welfare scheme to influence votes thereby resulting in what it termed as a violation of the model code of conduct.

Refusing to entertain the plea, a bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi came down heavily on the party for trying to use judicial forum to secure relief after having lost the polls.

Kishor's JSP had contested 242 of the 243 Assembly seats in the 2025 polls but failed to secure a single seat.

"How many votes did you get ? Once people reject you, you use the judicial forum to get relief! Somebody should have challenged the scheme itself then. That is not the prayer before us. You just want the election to be declared null and void," the bench was quoted as saying in a Bar and Bench report.

The court, however, asked the petitioner to approach the relevant high court in the matter. "Since it deals with only one State, please go to that High Court. In some cases, there is a serious issue of freebies which we will seriously examine," the court said.

The Court said that while it will examine the issue of freebies, it will also have to see the bonafides of the petitioner.

"We will consider the freebies issue. But we have to see the bona fide also.. we cannot look at that at the behest of a party which has just lost. When you come to power, you will do the exact thing," said CJI Surya Kant.

The plea was eventually dismissed as withdrawn.

The challenge before the Supreme Court primarily pertained to the Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana launched by the Nitish Kumar-led government in the state just ahead of polls. An amount of Rs 10,000 was to be directly transferred to the bank accounts to one woman in every family to help her start self-employment, with a further promise of Rs 2 lakh after assessment.

According to the plea, eligibility for the scheme was linked to membership of JEEVIKA, a network of women’s self-help groups. The State announced that women not already part of JEEVIKA could enrol to receive the benefit.

The Jan Suraaj party alleged that while around one crore women were already associated with JEEVIKA before the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) came into force, newspaper reports later showed that 1.56 crore women eventually received payments.

This indicated that new beneficiaries were added and paid after the election schedule was announced and while the MCC was in operation, the petition said.

The petition argued that releasing cash benefits during this period amounted to “corrupt practices” meant to unduly influence voters in favour of the ruling government.

The plea claimed that this deprived other political parties of a level playing field and struck at the core requirement of free and fair elections.