Prashant Kishor takes early lead in BJP bastion Bankipur on poll debut
Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor took a lead in the Bankipur Assembly by-election on Monday, leading BJP candidate Neeraj Kumar Sinha by 1,145 votes
Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor took a lead in the Bankipur Assembly by-election on Monday, leading BJP candidate Neeraj Kumar Sinha by 1,145 votes after the fourth round of counting in his maiden electoral contest. While the political strategist-turned-politician bagged 6,269 votes, Sinha got 5,124 votes and RJD's Rekha Gupta stood third with 884 votes after the third round of counting. Read Full Story Counting of votes began at 8 am amid tight security at Patna's AN College, with a total of 31 rounds scheduled to determine the winner of the high-profile contest, which has a total of 26 contenders.
The contest is being closely watched as Kishor seeks to wrest Bankipur from the BJP, which has held the constituency continuously since 1995, when the seat was known as Patna West. The by-election was necessitated after BJP national president Nitin Nabin vacated the seat following his election to the Rajya Sabha in April. The BJP has fielded youth leader Sinha, while the RJD has once again nominated Gupta, who lost to Nabin by more than 50,000 votes in the 2025 Assembly election. The bypoll, held on July 30, recorded a voter turnout of 34.30 per cent, down by more than 7 per cent from the 41.45 per cent registered in the last Assembly elections.
Hours before the counting of votes began, Kishor accused the Patna Police of attempting to influence the election. In a press conference late Sunday night, he claimed campaign workers were illegally detained, voters were intimidated, and announced that his party would approach the Election Commission and the Supreme Court over the alleged irregularities. Displaying a notice issued by the Patna Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Kishor said the administration had detained people who had come from outside to campaign on the grounds that they could create a law-and-order problem. He also presented some of the detained individuals before the media.
Projecting confidence ahead of the results, the Jan Suraaj chief also claimed that the BJP would lose the by-election by such a wide margin that it would "forget the saying that it can field even a cat or a dog and still win the election." Ends
The BriefWire