Bankipur byelection defeat: Bihar CM meets BJP leaders to review loss

Two days after his party’s defeat in the Bankipur assembly byelection — a seat that has been a Bhartiya Janata Party bastion for over three decades — Bihar Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary on Wednesday met senior party leaders at party headquarters in Patna and mulled hard over losing the seat.

Earlier, on Tuesday (August 4) a day after the poll result, former Bihar CM and now Rajya Sabha member Nitish Kumar had met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Parliament.

The Bankipur byelection result came on August 3, in which Jan Suraaj Party founder and leader Prashant Kishor defeated BJP candidate Neeraj Kumar Sinha by over 19,000 votes. The BJP had held the seat since 1995, and the byelection was necessitated after the party’s sitting MLA, Nitin Nabin, was elected party president and subsequently became a Rajya Sabha member. This was the first assembly byelection since party leader Samrat Choudhary became chief minister of the state.

“Every party learns from its mistakes and looks for its shortcomings. We’ve been winning the Bankipur seat, but what were the reasons that the seat fell from our hands? We’ll understand everything and correct them,” said BJP leader and State Education Minister Mithilesh Tiwari to reporters after the meeting. Mr Tiwari attended the meeting along with state party president Sanjay Saraogi, party organisational leader Bhikhubhai Dalsaniya, and other senior leaders. All party leaders reportedly mulled hard to identify the reasons for the candidate’s defeat in Bankipur.

“It was held by our party’s national president Nitin Nabin Ji, and it should not have fallen from our hands, but there must be some reasons that we lost there… We’ll introspect in detail and understand the reasons for our defeat there,” said a senior party leader, speaking on condition of anonymity. State BJP president Sanjay Saraogi also thanked party functionaries and leaders who had worked hard in the byelection, telling them that “a strong structural organisation is the BJP’s biggest identity.”

A day after the Bankipur byelection result, former Bihar Chief Minister and ruling ally Janata Dal (United) president Nitish Kumar — who was elected to the Rajya Sabha in March 2026 — met Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the PM’s office in the Parliament House complex on August 4. JD(U) leaders called it a “courtesy meeting” between the two leaders, though it is also said they discussed the party’s defeat in the Bankipur byelection.

JSP candidate Prashant Kishor, who won the byelection, had earlier said the Bankipur byelection would be a “referendum on the BJP government in Bihar.”

BJP sources in Bihar said party leaders would work “hard” to regain the electoral loyalty and trust of Bankipur voters in the coming days. “We were not expecting this Bankipur byelection result. The party this time got nearly 50% fewer votes than we did in the 2025 assembly poll, and since this was a byelection, it is important to have a detailed review of the result there,” said BJP spokesperson Kuntal Krishna.