Not BJP, but RJD has more to worry after Prashant Kishor's Bankipur victory
Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) founder Prashant Kishor's victory in the Bankipur bypoll on Monday will be remembered as the battle that ended the BJP's 35-year
Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) founder Prashant Kishor's victory in the Bankipur bypoll on Monday will be remembered as the battle that ended the BJP's 35-year dominance in one of its safest constituencies in Bihar. Yet, beyond the celebration of PK's political breakthrough lies a bigger question. Was the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), rather than the BJP, the real loser in the Bankipur verdict? Read Full Story PK defeated the BJP's Neeraj Kumar by 19,324 votes, but the bypoll also exposed another emerging trend — the shrinking political space occupied by the RJD. The party's candidate, Rekha Kumari, finished third and managed to get only 14,273 votes. The Bankipur Assembly seat has around four lakh voters, and the bypoll voter turnout was only 34.24%. The BJP might have been decimated from one of its safest seats, but it remains the state's ruling party. For the RJD, however, finishing a distant third in a contest where anti-BJP votes appeared to consolidate behind PK's Jan Suraaj Party has raised deeper concerns. If Bankipur is an indication of Bihar's changing political mood, PK might not just have dented the BJP's fortress, he might have begun eating into the RJD's position as the state's principal opposition. The Bankipur Assembly seat fell vacant after BJP national president Nitin Nabin resigned as MLA following his election to the Rajya Sabha. For over 30 years, the constituency has been synonymous with the Nabin family — 20 years under BJP national president Nitin Nabin and the previous 15 under his father, Navin Kishore Prasad Sinha. What was expected to be a routine BJP victory turned into the biggest political contest in Bihar after the 49-year-old poll strategist-turned-politician Prashant Kishor entered the fray with the party he established in 2024.
"One of the factors for PK's Bankipur victory is the RJD's decline. Its traditional Muslim-Yadav support base appeared to fragment," Political Analyst and VoteVibe founder Amitabh Tiwari told India Today Digital after the results were announced on Monday. The JSP couldn't even manage to secure a single seat in the previously held state Assembly election in 2025, and now its founder has won its first seat in the 243-member Assembly. BANKIPUR SETBACK: WILL PRASHANT KISHOR'S JSP EAT RJD? For nearly three decades, Bihar's politics revolved around two poles, Lalu Prasad Yadav's RJD and Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United). The BJP's rise altered that equation, and the opposition space largely remained with the RJD. That equation might now be changing in Bihar with Prashant Kishor's maiden electoral success. With the JD(U)'s influence waning after Nitish Kumar stepped down as chief minister in April and the BJP taking direct control of the government under Samrat Choudhary, the RJD appeared well-placed to emerge as the principal challenger to the ruling alliance. Instead, Bankipur has now made the possibility of Prashant Kishor seizing that space from the RJD. Political analyst Amitabh Tiwari believes the result is significant not merely because the BJP lost, but because the JSP appears to be occupying political ground once considered RJD territory. "The RJD had been reduced to just 22 Assembly seats in 2010 before reviving to around 80 seats in 2015, with Nitish Kumar's support in the Mahagathbandhan. But by the 2025 Bihar Assembly election, it had slipped back to around 25 seats, almost returning to its 2010 position. Now, finishing third in Bankipur adds to concerns about the party's political trajectory," Tiwari told India Today Digital.
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