Prashant Kishor reacts to Jan Suraaj's performance in Bihar: 'Not slept properly since election result'

Prashant Kishor

Prashant Kishor said he has not slept properly since party Jan Suraaj drew a blank in the Bihar Assembly election last week.

Kishor told NDTV that the poll result was a "huge shock" but he would continue his efforts in Bihar's political arena. "You are not defeated till you quit," he said. "The BJP too had just two MPs once. When you make a party, such results can come, but are the people of Prashant Kishor and Jan Suraaj? We did not spread the venom of caste and religion. We will try again," he said.

Kishor said he has committed 10 years to the welfare of Bihar. "I had committed 10 years to this effort in Bihar. About three and a half years have passed. Of course, I had not planned to taste success in the 10th year. We were certain that we would be successful in three years. That did not happen. We will try again," he said.

According to the Jan Suraaj Party chief,  his party's attempts did not yield electoral success but it managed to take the political discourse in Bihar away from just caste and religion to issues such as employment and migration.

Jan Suraaj Party got 16.77 lakh votes across the state. It lost its deposit on 236 of 238 seats it contested and on 230 of these seats its vote share was below 10 per cent.

Kishor told NDTV that he had not expected that Jan Suraaj would get just around 4 per cent vote share. He said that he never got a survey done before the polls. "I played it blind. My estimate was that we would get 12-15 per cent of the vote share. But it came to 3.5 per cent, so we need to analyse," he said.

JD(U)'s performance

Kishor had earlier claimed the ruling JD(U) won't win more than 25 seats. However,  the Nitish Kumar-led party bagged 85 seats. Asked about the claim, Kishor pointed to the Rs 10,000 self-employment assistance extended to 1.2 crore women ahead of the polls. According to him,  the state government spent over Rs 100 crore in each of the 243 constituencies.

"I firmly believe the JDU shouldn't have won more than 25 seats. But now that they have 'won' 80 plus, people are telling me 'your analysis was wrong'. It looks wrong on the surface... but, if you look closely, one of the factors is that the government gave Rs 100 crore to Rs 125 crore to the people (before voting) and, of this amount, 60,000 to 62,000 people were given Rs 10,000 each," he told NDTV.