Prashant Kishore Seeks A Foothold In Bihar

A bespectacled man in his late 40s arrives at an iftar party at the Fatehpur mosque in Vaishali district of Bihar and, with a liberal sprinkling of Urdu in his speech, announces he is against the controversial amendments in the 1995 Waqf law that chief minister Nitish Kumar라이브 바카라 party, the Janata Dal (United), duly supports as the ruling BJP라이브 바카라 ally.

“It라이브 바카라 Nitish who must stop the law, and if he doesn’t, then you should at least part ways with him,” he tells the gathering, reiterating his stance on the Waqf (Amendment) Act concerning management of assets donated by Muslims in a religious act of charity and hence deemed non-transferable. The amendments are apparently behind much of the resentment towards Nitish and his JD(U) among Muslims in Bihar today.

Among the men in the mosque listening to Prashant Kishor, also known as PK, a former electoral strategist for much of the country라이브 바카라 party spectrum—from the BJP and the JD(U) to the TMC, the DMK, AAP and the Congress—is 38-year-old Mohammad Irshad, who lives two km away. He likes what he hears and wants to see PK라이브 바카라 newly minted Jan Suraaj Party in power. “Be it Lalu Prasad or Nitish Kumar, they have only ‘used’ us. They form governments with Muslim votes, but what have they really done for us and our children? Everybody chooses a leader from their own caste. Then why don’t they put up Muslim candidates whom we could vote for?” Irshad asks.

PK is clearly eyeing the ‘Muslim vote’ in Bihar that has long coalesced around Nitish라이브 바카라 former ally and main rival Lalu Prasad라이브 바카라 Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). “You must stand for your rights, instructs your deen (way of life in submission to the faith라이브 바카라 holy book). Yet, once it라이브 바카라 time to cast your vote, you look at the numbers and choose the party that could beat the BJP,” he castigates the iftar crowd, in an obvious reference to the RJD that gets a chunk of the anti-BJP vote in the state governed by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition led by the JD(U). “This won’t take Islam forward as no one has done justice with Muslims. Forget the numbers, focus on your rights. Remove the fear of the BJP from your minds. For the sake of your community, act on the teachings of deen.”

Irshad is visibly impressed. “We won’t vote out of fear anymore,” he says. PK says that the RJD fields Yadav candidates even in the Muslim-majority areas where it banks on the ‘Muslim vote’.

“They have done nothing for the representation and welfare of the community, but Muslims still vote for Lalu as they cannot vote for the BJP, just like so many others vote for Nitish-BJP as they are scared of Lalu. It라이브 바카라 not out of love for either that people have been stuck between Lalu and the Nitish-BJP axis for the past 30–35 years. This fear-driven bonded political labour has ended with Jan Suraaj라이브 바카라 arrival,” says PK, whose Jan Suraaj Party was inaugurated in Patna on October 2, 2024, two years after he led a state-wide padyatra to identify individuals and issues for engaging with the local communities.

Last year, when bypolls were held for four assembly seats, PK라이브 바카라 party contested all four and bagged nearly 10 per cent of the votes in two constituencies, Imamganj and Belaganj. The party will run for all 243 seats in the assembly election this year and has been organising awareness-raising rallies in every district. Pointing out that representation of every community proportional to its population is among Jan Suraaj라이브 바카라 core concerns, PK says the party will accordingly field Muslims in 40 constituencies. “If Muslims see Jan Suraaj as a better option to vote for, then the RJD panics and tries to scare the community, saying it would split the Muslim vote,” he alleges.

According to senior journalist Surur Ahmad, Jan Suraaj라이브 바카라 Muslim focus is due to Bihar라이브 바카라 caste-divided political landscape where various caste groupings are already tied with the existing big players. “Among the backward castes, the Yadavs are committed to the RJD, the Koeris and the Kurmis are loyal to the JD(U), and the Sahus, the Baniyas and the Telis vote for the BJP,” says Ahmad. “The Mahadalit votes go to former CM Jitan Ram Manjhi라이브 바카라 Hindustani Awam Morcha, and the Paswan votes to Chirag Paswan라이브 바카라 Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas). Among the savarna (elite) castes, even PM Narendra Modi라이브 바카라 detractors vote for the BJP as they feel they are politically powerful so long as the BJP holds the reins in the state.”

Comprising 18 per cent of Bihar라이브 바카라 population, Muslims are the third-largest bloc in the electorate after the backward castes and the Dalits. They are key to Jan Suraaj라이브 바카라 plans as their votes could potentially disrupt the political calculations of the other parties. The other segment PK라이브 바카라 party is targeting are women who comprise half the electorate and will be given Jan Suraaj tickets to run for 40 seats. In Bihar, in fact, voter turnouts have been consistently higher among women—it climbed from 54.5 per cent (compared to 53 for men) in the 2010 Assembly election to 60.4 per cent (men: 51.1) in 2015 and dropped only slightly to 59.7 per cent (men: 54.6) in 2020. At some of the Jan Suraaj meetings, women outnumber men.

The outreach to women is challenging, though, given Nitish라이브 바카라 welfare schemes for them in the past two decades that have so far brought him a big chunk of their votes—both in 2010 when JD(U) had contested in alliance with the BJP, as well as in 2015 when Nitish and Lalu had joined hands.

“This time we won’t vote for Modi-ji, but for Prashant Kishor라이브 바카라 party, as we want jobs, not temples,” says Anita, a 35-year-old mother of two at the Jan Suraaj gathering at Vibhutipur market in Samastipur district. Both her sons have studied up to Class 12 and she doesn’t wish to see them leave home in search of work like their father. “My husband works in Kolkata so we can make ends meet,” says Anita. “People leave their children and family because there is no work here.” According to media reports, nearly five million people migrate from Bihar every year. Admitting that women bear the brunt when their husbands or children go to faraway places for work, Jan Suraaj has promised to stop migration completely within a year of being voted to power. “Let us see what Prashant Kishor does in the next five years. We’ve seen the others long enough. If we are made fools again, it would only happen once, right?” Anita asks.

According to PK, labour migration can be stopped by stemming the “outflow of capital via banks, which would enable Bihar to attract Rs 2 to 2.5 lakh crore investment annually, boosting consumption, investment and thereby jobs”. “We will also link the rural employment scheme MGNREGA with agriculture so farm labourers who go to Punjab or Haryana will be able to work on farms in Bihar instead,” he says.

Caste, however, remains the key to political power in Bihar, where people are said to vote not for the candidates but for their caste. The savarna castes dominated politics in the decades after Independence when the first CM (1946-61)—Krishna Singh (Sinha) a.k.a Shri Babu—belonged to a Bhumihar (landholding, instead of priestly, Brahmin) caste. Rajputs and Brahmins, too, were partners in power. Later, the Dalits and the backward castes—who number more than the other castes in Bihar, comprising 19.5 per cent and 63 per cent of its population, respectively—were mobilised with Karpuri Thakur as their voice. After 1990, the Mandal movement changed the course of politics as regional parties developed alongside the emergence of Dalit and backward caste leaders with a mass appeal. Since the 1995 election, Bihar politics has revolved around Lalu and Nitish. All the savarna castes together comprise only around 10 per cent of the electorate, and the Jan Suraaj Party has no new equation to break the prevalent combinations of the backward castes.

D.M. Diwakar, former director of the A.N. Sinha Institute of Social Studies, feels PK is not in a position to make the 2025 election triangular. “But he can certainly make inroads into the vote banks of the Grand Alliance of the RJD and the Congress,” he says. “Prashant라이브 바카라 party will bag some of the non-BJP votes, mostly of the Muslims.” Recalling that Ram Vilas Paswan had “adamantly insisted” on a Muslim CM 20 years ago, which kept the RJD away from power, Diwakar says Jan Suraaj will play a similar role. Many believe the BJP would benefit.

PK, who has often mentioned the failing health of Nitish and Lalu, could be seeing this as a political opportunity. However, the way Lalu라이브 바카라 son Tejashwi Yadav led the Grand Alliance in the 2020 election in his father라이브 바카라 absence showed the scion was in control of the party. While Lalu was in jail, Tejashwi held 250 rallies and the RJD won 75 seats. In the JD(U), however, there doesn’t seem to be any figure who could become the face of the party or take command after Nitish. Some recent statements by his son Nishant Kumar reveal there could be efforts to bring him into the JD(U) to prevent Nitish라이브 바카라 caste equations from falling apart. “The politics of Bihar is based on the caste system,” says Santosh Singh, a journalist. “Prashant라이브 바카라 party neither has a big organisational structure nor does it reach till the village. He may make a slight dent on the votes of the secular parties, but his stature is not yet so large that he can significantly sway the core voters of Lalu and Nitish.”

(Translated by Kaveri Mishra)

Md Asghar Khan is senior correspondent from Jharkhand

This article is part of 바카라라이브 바카라 May 01, 2025 issue 'Username Waqf' which looks at the Waqf Amendment Act of 2025, its implications, and how it is perceived by the Muslim community. It appeared in print as 'The PK Doctrine.'