Patna: In a disastrous electoral debut, Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj party drew a blank in the Bihar assembly bypolls.
All four candidates of the strategist-turned-actvist’s recently launched party lost, with three of them forced to forfeit their security deposits.
Pointed out that in three of the four seats, Jan Suraaj candidates had obtained less than one-sixth of total votes polled and lost their deposits, Kishor replied, “That should not be a matter of concern… If there is a matter of concern, it is the ability of the NDA to make a clean sweep despite having ruled Bihar for so long and failed to end the state’s backwardness.”
Kishor sought to draw comfort from the fact that his new party won “10 per cent” of the total votes polled in four seats, while rubbishing the theory that it had played a role in Rashtriya Janata Dal’s defeat in three of those constituencies.
“The RJD is a 30-year-old party. The son of its state president finished third. Can the Jan Suraaj be faulted for that? In Belaganj, all Muslim votes went to the Janata Dal United candidate. In Imamganj, the Jan Suraaj cut into the NDA votes. Else, the victory margin of (Union minister) Jitan Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha would have been bigger,” PTI quoted Kishor as saying.
The I-PAC founder, who had a brief stint with JD(U), insisted that Bihar CM Nitish Kumar was a ‘spent force’.
“We have always said that our fight is with NDA, not with RJD despite its claim of being the largest party in Bihar….. (but) Nitish Kumar is no factor. His party polled just about 11 per cent of total votes,” said Kishor. He reiterated that Jan Suraaj will go solo in the next year’s Bihar Assembly polls and contest “all 243 seats”.
