Prashant Kishor calls upcoming by-election at Bankipur Assembly a “referendum” on BJP government in Bihar

The Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) founder and former poll strategist Prashant Kishor called the upcoming by-poll at Bankipur Assembly seat a “referendum” on the BJP government in the State; the BJP on Tuesday (July 7, 2026) countered it, saying Mr. Kishor had been “thoroughly exposed” earlier in the last 2025 Assembly elections in the State and even failed to “secure deposits”. Meanwhile, extending support to the JSP candidate Mr. Kishor, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) party MP from Asansol in West Bengal Shatrughan Sinha called Mr Kishor’s candidature as “political dhamaka”.

The by-poll at Bankipur constituency is scheduled to be held on July 30, and the results will come out on August 3. The Bankipur Assembly seat had fallen vacant after BJP’s Nitin Nabin, who had won the poll in the 2025 Assembly election, was later elected as party national president and then the Rajya Sabha member.

The BJP, meanwhile, on Tuesday (July 8, 2026) announced the name of the party’s youth leader and young party worker from the Kayastha community, Abhishek Kumar, as the party’s candidate on the seat. The Opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal has retained its candidate, Rekha Kumari alias Rekha Gupta, who had secured about 47,000 votes in the 2025 Assembly elections on the seat against Mr. Nabin. The newly founded Janashakti Janata Dal of Tej Pratap Yadav, Lalu Prasad’s older son, has announced the name of social activist Veena Manvi as party candidate from the seat.

The Bankipur seat, though, has been BJP’s traditional bastion from where the newly elected party president and Rajya Sabha member Nitin Nabin has been winning the Assembly elections for the last five consecutive terms. Earlier, it was his late father Nabin Kishore Prasad Sinha’s who had represented the seat four times in the State Assembly.

Earlier, the constituency was known as the Patna West seat. Following Mr. Sinha’s untimely death, Nitin Nabin entered politics and won the Assembly poll from the constituency for the first time in 2006, and since then he has been retaining the seat. The Bankipur Assembly constituency in Patna district has about 4 lakh voters and is dominated by Kayastha and Vaishya (trader) class voters. The Kayastha community is about 15-20% of the total electorate in the constituency, while the Vaishyas are also a sizeable demographic block on this urban seat of Patna district.

“The Bankipur Assembly by-poll will be a strong referendum on the popularity of the BJP government in the State. The people of Bankipur are the richest and the most educated in Bihar and I feel they can repose their trust in me”, said the Jan Suraaj Party candidate Prashant Kishor whose party JSP, which had contested total 238 seats out of total 243 in BiharAssembly with overall vote share got of over 3%, could not win even a single seat in last 2025 Assembly elections in the State. Mr. Kishor also alleged Nitin Nabin for “abandoning them when he got the first opportunity to enter Parliament”.

However, the BJP MP from Begusarai in the state and Union Minister of Textiles, Giriraj Singh, on Tuesday (July 8) retorted, “We’ve seen Prashant Kishore in the last 2025 Assembly elections too when he was thoroughly exposed and even failed to secure deposits”. Mr Singh further said that “the people of Bankipur had elected Nitin Nabin as an MLA several times earlier and later made him party’s national president and they will respect him once again”.

The Trinamool Congress MP from Asansol in West Bengal, Shatrughan Sinha, who is also popularly known as Shotgun Sinha, however, retorted in support of Mr. Kishor’s candidature as a “strong political dhamaka”. “The most deserving, visionary and an intellectual par excellence, and of the masses, most loved, admired and talked about personality in totality, Prashant Kishor at last has jumped into the fray and has created a real sensation in political circle and in public”, Mr Sinha wrote in a social media X post. He also called Mr. Kishor’s candidature as a “string political dhamaka”.