New Delhi: The Prashant Kishor-led Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) has released a list of 51 candidates, including many professionals such as lawyers, doctors, and academicians, for the upcoming Bihar assembly elections.
Former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer R.K. Mishra will contest on a JSP ticket from Darbhanga. IPS R.K. Mishra, a former director general (home guards), served in the police force for a long time and is known for his strict working style. His association with the Jan Suraaj Party is traceable to its inception.
Addressing a press conference, Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) national president Uday Singh said Prashant Kishor will kickstart the poll campaign from Raghopur—a high-profile assembly seat, now represented by the former Bihar deputy chief minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav.
JSP is the first party to declare a list of candidates for the Bihar assembly elections.
“On the upcoming 11th (11 October), Prashant Kishor ji will be in Raghopur for the entire day, and the campaign will officially kick off from Raghopur itself. There is very little time—everything would need to get done within a month. It [electoral contest] marks the culmination of the three years of hard work put into Jan Suraaj, and in that, all of you have also had active involvement,” Uday Singh said.
Apart from R.K. Mishra, renowned mathematician K.C. Sinha has been fielded from the Kumhrar seat. K.C. Sinha has also served as the vice-chancellor of several universities in Bihar in the past. Schools have been teaching students his mathematics textbooks for the past several years.
Prashant Kishor, who launched his Jan Suraaj Party on 2 October 2024, has been busy cornering the Nitish Kumar-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in Bihar over corruption, among other issues. Meanwhile, he positioned himself as an alternative leader capable of ushering in ‘clean politics’ in Bihar. However, his name does not figure in the list of 52 candidates.
The Jan Suraaj Party candidate list also includes several other professionals. Addressing a press conference in Patna, Uday Singh stressed the party’s commitments, highlighting that the candidates represent all sections of society.
According to the candidate list of JSP, 17 candidates belong to the extremely backward classes, 11 candidates are from the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), and eight candidates, who belong to minority groups, among others.
According to a Jan Suraaj Party functionary, the list has a clear focus on social engineering—it includes people from the OBC, Scheduled Castes (SC), and minority communities, as well as those from the General category.
Jai Prakash Singh, a former IPS officer of the Himachal Pradesh cadre who recently joined the JSP, has been fielded from the Chapra assembly constituency. A 2000-batch officer, he took voluntary retirement while serving as the ADGP or additional director general of police in the Crime Investigation Department (CID). He has since then been quite active in Chapra, and the JSP is confident he will perform well in the elections.
Doctor Aman Kumar Das will contest the assembly elections from the Muzaffarpur seat. The party has also fielded Yadu Vansh Giri, a senior advocate at the Patna High Court and spokesperson for the JSP, from the Manjhi assembly constituency.
Jagriti Thakur, the former Bihar chief minister Karpoori Thakur’s granddaughter who joined the party last year, will contest the elections from the Morwa assembly seat.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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