Prashant Kishor to make electoral debut in Bihar polls; Jan Suraaj to release list on October 9

Prashant Kishor

Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor on Monday confirmed that he will be in the fray for the upcoming Bihar assembly elections. Speaking to reporters in Patna, he revealed that his party will release the list of candidates on October 9.

“The party will declare its list of candidates for the coming assembly polls on October 9 and it will be full of surprises. My name will also be there in the list,” Kishor stated, without disclosing the constituency he plans to contest from. “You will come to know on October 9,” he added with a smile.

Earlier in the day, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar announced in Delhi that Bihar’s assembly elections will take place in two phases — on November 6 and November 11 — with counting scheduled for November 14.

Confident about his party’s performance, Kishor claimed that the Jan Suraaj Party would attract support from a significant section of voters who did not back either the NDA or the INDIA bloc in the last election. “In the last polls, the two alliances bagged votes of 72 per cent of voters only. I must clarify that we will get votes of the remaining 28 per cent of the voters,” he said.

He went on to assert that even voters from both major alliances would shift towards his party. “People say that Jan Suraaj Party will get 10 per cent votes each of both alliances. That means we are expected to get 48 per cent votes of the total electorate in the coming polls,” Kishor predicted.

Asked about the likely impact of his party on the traditional political landscape, he remarked that the Jan Suraaj Party would “decisively damage votes of both NDA and INDIA bloc.”

Turning his attention to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Kishor made a strong prediction about the veteran leader’s future. “I am saying it with full confidence that this will be the last election of Nitish Kumar. He will not celebrate the next ‘Makar Sankranti’ (in January 2026) at 1 Anne Marg, the official residence of the Bihar chief minister,” he said.

Describing the upcoming polls as a turning point for the state, Kishor said the election “will write a new chapter in Bihar” and that voters would make their choice “for the bright future of their children, against migration and unemployment.”

With inputs from PTI