Patna: Poll strategist Prashant Kishor’s padyatra in Bihar may be “slow”, but its impact will be felt in the 2024 assembly elections, newly-elected Jan Suraaj-backed Member of Legislative Council Afaq Ahmad said Friday.
“He (Kishor) meets 2,000 people a day. When he ends his padayatra, he would have met around one crore people,” Ahmad, a teacher who won an MLC bypoll as an independent candidate on 5 April, told ThePrint. “He has also established youth clubs in villages so that they can participate in electoral body polls and be away from ‘WhatsApp University’. He talks about the failed education system, healthcare and youth employment. It will break caste and communal combinations in the future.”
Ahmad was speaking after a meeting at the Jan Suraaj office in Patna. Held on the 209th day of Kishor’s 3,000 km-long yatra, the meeting was aimed at showcasing its first electoral success — Ahmad’s victory from the Saran Teachers’ seat by a margin of 674 votes.
It’s been seven months since the poll strategist began his Jan Suraaj (people’s good governance) Yatra around the state. First announced in May, the padyatra, or foot march, aims to cover all 38 districts of the state.
Progress has been slow — the padyatra is currently in its seventh district, Vaishali, and has 31 more districts to go.
It’s significant to note that Kishor’s Jan Suraaj (his padyatra carries the same name) is still a political outfit and not yet a registered political party. But legislators who support it remain optimistic about its future. Sachchidanand Rai, an independent MLC from Saran who also attended the meeting, hinted that the 2024 general election may not be a priority for the outfit.
“(The padayatra’s) impact will definitely be felt in the 2025 assembly polls and 80 per cent sitting MLAs will have to retire,” Rai claimed, while speaking to ThePrint.
He also claimed that the outfit had the support of yet another legislator — RJD MLC Maheshwar Singh.
While Singh did not attend the meeting, Rai, a former BJP leader and businessman who was elected from Saran as an independent candidate last year, said: “That does not mean Maheshwar Singh does not support us. He may be busy in his native town Motihari.” ThePrint reached Singh through calls and text messages. This report will be updated when a response is received.
But rivals don’t see Prashant Kishor and his outfit as a real threat in Bihar politics. The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), which is part of the ruling mahagathbandhan — an alliance it made with Janata Dal (United) and the Congress — said his padyatra would benefit the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“We don’t consider Prasant Kishor a political worker. He’s a professional whose loyalty is with the BJP. He started his business with the BJP and his padyatra is aimed at helping the BJP,” RJD’s chief spokesperson Shakti Yadav told ThePrint.
Leaders from the JD(U) — the party that Kishor helped win in the 2015 assembly elections and that he was a part of for nearly two years from 2018 to 2020 — similarly dismiss him.
“Prashant Kishor started this padyatra after his credibility as an election strategist took a beating,” JD(U)’s MLC Neeraj Kumar said, speaking to ThePrint. “The MLC who won by his support is dubious…He (Kishor) will never be a serious threat to traditional political parties.”
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PK and political future
When he first announced his 3,000-km ‘Jan Suraaj’ padyatra in May 2022, former poll strategist Prashant Kishor had admitted that failure was a possibility.
“At the most, I will fail. But this will not stop me from trying,” Kishor, known by his initials PK, told ThePrint at the time.
In his speeches, Kishor has been critical of both BJP and the mahagathbandhan, although he appears particularly scathing when it comes to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar — the man he helped win in 2015.
“Future generations will never forgive Nitish Kumar for destroying the education system in Bihar,” he said in a speech in Vaishali on 26 April. “In every village, 40- 50 per cent have been forced to migrate from Bihar for either education or jobs. Nitish has given Bihar only two things — sand mafia and liquor mafia.”
At a media interaction a day earlier, Kishor claimed Nitish would meet the fate of former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu, who, while trying to unite the opposition, ended up losing power in the state.
But he has also been critical of other opposition parties — in the same media interaction, he mocked Tejashwi Yadav’s promise of providing 10 lakh jobs to the state’s youth. “What job would Tejashwi have gotten had he not been the son of Lalu Yadav?” he asked.
He has also accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of not doing enough for Bihar — a state that gave his BJP 39 MPs in the 2019 general election.
However, despite Jan Suraaj’s celebration of Ahmad’s electoral success, rivals wonder if the it has a political future.
According to former chairman of the Bihar legislative council Awadhesh Narain Singh, MLC elections are different from general elections or even assembly polls.
“Initially, the idea was to give representation to teachers and educated persons in the council. But through the years, every political party gives tickets to persons having immense resources. Thus persons who may not do well in general polls may win council elections. And if it’s not about money, it’s about how well organised you are to ensure your supporters turn up at the polling booth,” Singh, a BJP leader and a former minister in the Nitish Kumar government, told ThePrint.
However, a BJP MLA who didn’t want to be named admitted that Kishor has proved, through the legislative council polls, that he could create political ripples.
“But he has a long way to go before he can be considered a serious challenger in Bihar politics,” the MLA told ThePrint.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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