Prashant Kishor’s victory can be a gamechanger for Bihar, impacts BJP and RJD

New Delhi: Prashant Kishor has finally graduated from a political strategist to a lawmaker, winning the Bankipur Assembly by-election in Bihar by defeating the BJP in its pocket borough of three decades. This victory, not surprisingly hailed by some and dismissed as a flash in the pan by others, is symptomatic of current politics and will lead to interesting developments in Bihar.

Conventionally, by-elections are won by the ruling party and do not upset the applecart in the concerned Assembly or the Lok Sabha. In recent times, when Samajwadi Party leader Awadhesh Prasad won the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat in 2024 and vacated Milkipur Assembly seat, BJP’s Chandrabhanu Paswan wrested it from SP.

Also Read: Prashant Kishor secures maiden electoral win with commanding lead in BJP bastion Bankipur


Kishor’s victory is similar to the upset in Gorakhpur Lok Sabha by-election after Yogi Adityanath vacated the seat in 2017 to become Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister. In the polls held in 2018, Praveen Nishad of Samajwadi Party won, leading to some embarrassment for the saffron party.

Bankipur seat was vacated by BJP Chief Nitin Nabin when he became a Rajya Sabha member. The constituency (called Patna West earlier) had stayed loyal to BJP for the last 30 years and was with Nabin’s family as his father Naveen Kishore Sinha had represented it four times before him. Nabin had himself won this seat thrice.

Needless to say, losing a seat vacated by a chief minister or the BJP President is bound to cause embarrassment for the party.

Kishor has finally crossed the threshold, making the transition from a backroom strategist to becoming an MLA. His victory came just eight and a half months after the Bihar Assembly elections in which his Jan Suraj Party could not open its account. To his credit, Kishor had traversed throughout the state and raised all the pertinent questions about some and RJD leaders.

What Lies Ahead

Kishor, a Brahmin from Buxar in West Bihar, will not only vociferously counter the BJP-JDU government, he is also a threat to the RJD as he is likely to wean away the focus from the main Opposition.

With Leader of the Opposition Tejaswi Yadav mostly seen as an absentee leader who does not spend much time among the people in Bihar, Kishor is expected to emerge as the face of the Opposition both in the state Assembly as well as in the public space and the media.

Kishor has no love lost for Bihar Chief Minister Samrat Chaudhary and has made scathing attacks on him about his reported conviction in murder cases. He has also alleged that Chaudhary does not have valid degrees. His offensive against the CM is likely to intensify and become a daily affair. Soon after winning the election on Monday, Kishor demanded that BJP choose a better leader to helm the state.

Kishor had also slammed Tejaswi Yadav during the Assembly polls in 2025, alleging he had not completed his high school.

Apart from attacks on the CM, there are worries for BJP in the future as well. Kishor’s growth in the electoral battlefield is likely to be at the expense of the BJP as he will make a dent into the Brahmin and upper caste votes of the saffron party. Bankipur is an urban seat and Kishor’s victory is a threat to this vote bank of the BJP.

If Kishor does not lose his way as Arvind Kejriwal did in Delhi and is not vanquished by the established parties in the future, he may end up playing a long innings. As of now, his main role would be to raise issues about Bihar’s welfare, stagnant growth, poor law and order, economic backwardness, high unemployment and migration of talented youth to other parts of the country.