So, what are the meaning and message of Prashant Kishor’s stupendous victory against the Bharatiya Janata Party in Bankipur of Patna?
The fledgling Jan Suraj Party’s founder has conquered the turf tailor-made for Hindutva politics in the heart of Bihar. Symbolically, the blow is more jarring for the BJP because it has come in the seat that Nitin Nabin vacated after becoming the party’s national president and subsequently moving to the Rajya Sabha. It will apparently create doubts among its cadres about whether Nabin is capable enough to spearhead the party in the run-up to the 2029 elections, which will follow the 2027 Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.
Moreover, the BJP’s pain is likely to grow more—the “cockroaches” and “viruses” that symbolise the boundless energy and raw anger of Generation Z have badly bruised and wounded Hindutva. Gen Z’s anger and fortitude manifested at Jantar Mantar in Delhi and in many other states, including Bihar. It’s naïve to assume that Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation was the culmination of the phenomenon. It was just the beginning—the fire is leaping up to the necks of Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
As of now, the BJP cadres are shocked, for they have no clue what they will do with tons of laddus that they had got prepared in advance to celebrate the victory that they were sure of, while the Jan Suraj cadres have broken into wild celebration on Patna’s streets. To the shock and awe of the Modi-Shah brand of party cadres, hundreds and thousands of those who chanted “Har-Har Modi, Ghar-Ghar Modi” till the Assembly elections in Bihar, barely nine months ago, chose Prashant Kishor over Neeraj Kumar Sinha—the BJP’s nominee.
Positives for PK:
The Jan Suraj Party suffered a humiliation at the 2025 Assembly polls in Bihar. Though Prashant himself kept out of the fray, his party secured barely 3.44% of the votes, and its candidates forfeited their security deposits in most of the 238 seats of the 243 it contested. As an election strategist, he had worked with leaders of diverse ideological streams and across diverse landscapes—from a Hindutva icon, Narendra Modi, in Gujarat to a Socialist, Nitish Kumar, and from the ideology-less Arvind Kejriwal to the famed progeny of the Dravidian movement, M. K. Stalin. He also strategised the campaigns of mercurial Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal and Amarinder Singh in the complicated terrain of the bordering state of Punjab. Admittedly, he shouldered the campaigns of a dozen chief ministers from east to west and north to south.
Perhaps, his own ideological flexibility and sharp sense of identifying the issues bedevilling the larger electorate equipped him to operate successfully for his “political clients”, rich with their respective ideologies and organisations. He gave a language to the statistics related to the psychology of the voters in the context of the issues in their respective states and facilitated his clients—all at the top of their hierarchy—to implement his inputs through their respective cadres within their respective ideological frames.
However, the trouble erupted when he moved on to become a client of his own and chose Bihar, his home state. By the time he moved on to become a leader from a manager, he had, of course, sharpened his skills and acquired better knowledge and more experience too. He walked on foot on the muddy streets through rains and sunshine, four years ago. He walked to the poor and the rich, elites and marginalised, Hindus and Muslims, and spoke the language of harmony and material well-being of the people, irrespective of their caste or sectarian affiliations. In the process, he formed the Jan Suraj Party about three years ago.
In India, people apparently earn riches after becoming politicians. Prashant Kishor deserves accolades because he earned riches ahead of becoming a politician and used his earned resources to succeed in politics.
However, what Prashant Kishor apparently lacked in 2025 was the cadre trained in political ideology and the appropriate organisational framework. This writer has never been tempted to equate him with Arvind Kejriwal, who is altogether a different phenomenon in a different context.
Prashant, at the outset, explained the model of the Jan Suraj Party as that of the Congress during the freedom struggle under the stewardship of Mahatma Gandhi. He adopted Gandhi as the emblem of his party, and later, acquiring feedback from the ground, combined B. R. Ambedkar with Gandhi in the party’s insignia.
But, say it was a shortage of time or a weakness in vision, he initially populated his cadres with salaried professionals. Such professionals, by instinct, are career-oriented and ill-equipped to take on political cadres at the ground level. Moreover, career-oriented professionals can’t be the right people in a political set-up. Gandhi, Ambedkar and Nehru, whom he idolises, had shunned careers to become political activists, demanding a different mindset.
But credit goes to Prashant, who didn’t leave the political battlefield despite losing so heavily. He learnt quickly. After the 2025 debacle, he formed the Jan Suraj Party’s frontal organisation, Sangharsh Vahini, manned by political cadres, and deployed them at the booths and in mohallas to match the Panna Pramukh and other micro-management instruments of the BJP. Prashant, to a great extent, shunned his own arrogance, getting mellowed down and travelling among the people with folded hands and in a humble demeanour. But he was quite aggressive when it came to protecting his cadres against the police’s partisan acts in favour of the BJP, or taking up the issue of the alleged murder of Bharat Bhushan Tiwari at the hands of the police and the rape of a hostel girl in Patna.
Vis-à-vis taking up the issues of police brutality against common people, Prashant Kishor engaged the thana-level police officials till 2 a.m. on the night ahead of the polls on July 30, giving confidence to his cadres.
Challenges Ahead:
Of course, the Gen Z agitation, coupled with the allegations of loot of chanda (donation) and chadhawa (offerings) by custodians of the Ram temple at Ayodhya, has sullied the image of the PM and his party at large. The PM and his alter ego, Amit Shah, have no answer for the systematic loot of Ramdhan (God’s wealth) worth crores of rupees allegedly by the trustees and managers drawn from the Sangh Parivar stock. They have no answer to the elevation of a Sangh operative, P. K. Joshi, from the Madhya Pradesh Public Service Commission chairman to UPSC chairman and then to the chief of the NTA. Joshi’s career is on the rise despite more than a dozen instances of paper leaks under his stewardship of the NTA, which is as opaque as the PM CARES Fund and the management of chanda and chadhawa at the Ram Temple in Ayodhya.
All these events were playing in the background of the Bankipur election, which surely would have benefited Prashant Kishor’s prospects.
However, Prashant still speaks in administrative language; he talks about migration, better employment opportunities, better education and honesty in governance. It’s not bad to speak in administrative lingo. But administrative language is just a garment of politics, which is rooted in deeper ideology and trained cadres.
Fortunately for Prashant, the BJP, trained in an ideology of hate and divisiveness, is ill-equipped to handle the issues of Generation Z. The BJP lacks the lingo to communicate with young Indians in the age group of 17 to 32, who have their own phrases to express their concerns and don’t align with the BJP’s version of ‘love jihad’, ghuspaithiya, deshdrohi, upadravi, Sanatan and anti-national. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh activists might be describing them as ‘virus’ and ‘cockroaches’, but they are free from the virus of communalism and gender bias, which are the BJP’s strengths.
Prashant Kishor and his cadres will have to sharpen their lingo and align their politics with the cause of Generation Z to meet the challenges ahead. It will be disastrous for him and his party if they create the perception that they will improve the tools of administration and means of delivery while shying away from attacking the Sangh Parivar’s soul of politics. Ideological flexibility might have worked for him as a poll strategist. But ideological clarity holds the key to his long-term.