'Prashant Kishor is a businessman before he is a politician, and given that the expected average turnout for JSP candidates is 5,000 to 6,000 votes and since Bihar has a significant number of seats where the margin between the winner and runner-up falls within that range he will capitalise on exactly that to showcase his presence.'
Slogans such as "Hamara neta kaisa ho, Prashant Kishor jaisa ho" rent the air when Kishor -- on October 2, 2022 -- started his padayatra across Bihar from the Bhitiharwa Gandhi Ashram in West Champaran.
Over the past almost 12 years, Kishor has helped shape electoral strategies for Narendra Modi, Nitish Kumar, Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal, but has turned away from being a backroom boy to launch an ambitious grassroots movement, Jan Suraaj.
It began as a mass-outreach programme to assess the situation in Bihar and reached one of its goals -- to be launched as a political party -- two years later.
The Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) was formally floated last year, with Kishor choosing October 2 for this event too.
Initially, he had claimed that the people of Bihar would decide whether the movement would shade into a party.
However, it was evident right from the get go that a political party would be launched since an application was filed for registering it with the same name to the Election Commission of India (ECI) on August 26, 2022, even before the yatra had started.
The ECI documents list S K Mishra as president, Bijaya Sahoo as general secretary, and Ajit Singh as treasurer of the party.
With over 10 million members, or so it claimed, at the time of its launch, the JSP, even at such a nascent stage, boasts a strong organisational network built on the back of Kishor's yatra, which reached people at panchayat level to achieve the avowed objective of what he described as a "people-driven political platform".
The Jan Suraaj Yatra was a strategically designed data-gathering exercise.
According to a Jan Suraaj 'fellow' who was part of the first team assembled to design the padayatra, the strategy was devised around the fact that while Bihar had roughly 38,800 revenue villages, a large share of its 92 million rural residents lives in just 15,000 to 20,000 villages with populations of over 1,000.
The yatra was, therefore, mapped around covering these densely populated villages with the aim of maximising outreach and engagement.
Once these high-density villages were identified, further filters were applied to focus on those with concentrated populations of Scheduled Castes, Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs), and non-Yadav Other Backward Classes (OBCs).
A field team of 10 TO 20 people was deployed for each village well ahead of Kishor's arrival.
These teams collected detailed data on local politically relevant individuals, or PRIs, and hyperlocal issues at panchayat level.
After this groundwork was done, the team mapped multiple walking routes of 10 to 15 km that passed through key areas determined by the data collected. Kishor would then select the final route.
Along the chosen route, three-five major stops were identified daily for sabhas, or public gatherings, where Kishor would address local issues in pointed, data-informed speeches.
These sabhas were paired with what the team called 'swagat points', locations where local leaders, especially those who had previously lost panchayat elections but retained influence, were encouraged to bring their voter base to meet Kishor.
These leaders were pre-identified and engaged by the field team in advance, with the goal of drawing both crowds and future party workers into the Jan Suraaj fold.
A key feature of these public meetings was the release of a 'people's manifesto', a panchayat-specific document focusing on hyperlocal issues.
This bottom-up manifesto model became a signature of the yatra.
Simultaneously, the team set a unique target of setting up 10 youth clubs in every village, equipped with sports and indoor games kits, to engage young people and build a long-term support base.
Committees were also created, and they consisted of 101 members at panchayat level, 251 at block level, and 501 at the district level to formalise grassroots engagement.
Each day, one sabha was held in the evening as a grand event. Night sabhas featured food and well-lit large pandals to attract crowds.
The idea was simple -- to ensure that every event maximised visibility, participation, and the spread of information.
Ground-level dissemination was amplified further through a robust digital-media strategy, allowing Jan Suraaj's messaging to echo far beyond the physical reach of the padyatra.
Way before Kishor's arrival in any village or block, his team had already spent weeks on the ground collecting data.
From the state of local schools and health centres to caste dynamics, livelihood patterns, and unresolved grievances, these insights enabled him to speak with specificity.
"Our effort was to portray him not as just another leader with a fiery speech. He is a man equipped with a granular understanding of what really matters to people," a source said.
Despite all the groundwork, the JSP is yet to make a significant mark in electoral politics.
It did not contest the 2024 Lok Sabha election but at one point there was internal discussion of contesting.
But the question was put to rest after Nitish Kumar switched to the National Democratic Alliance, a former Jan Suraaj fellow aware of the matter told Business Standard.
The JSP then said the party needed to consolidate its grassroots presence before jumping into high-stakes battles.
However, the JSP did back candidates in several panchayat and municipal body elections in Bihar.
Except for a victory in a legislative council election from Saran by Jan Suraaj-backed candidate Afaque Ahmad, the party is yet to taste a major victory.
In November last year, all its candidates lost the bypolls to four assembly seats in Bihar.
Of the four, its candidates came third in three seats and fourth in one, and lost deposits in all.
Speaking to reporters after the results, Kishor put on a brave front and highlighted that his only one-month-old party won 10 per cent of the votes polled in the four seats.
Yet, this has come with the party being described as 'vote splitter' and a 'B-team' of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Kishor has disputed this and insisted that the JSP's fight in the Bihar assembly polls, scheduled for October, is against the ruling National Democratic Alliance.
However, a closer examination of the results of the four bypolls throws up a more entangled picture of the effect that the JSP had on these seats.
In each of the seats, the vote of the JSP candidate was more than 50 per cent of the margin between the winner and the runner-up.
The NDA's constituents won all the four seats, of which it wrested three seats from the Opposition.
The Belaganj seat, a long-time Rashtriya Janata Dal stronghold, flipped to the NDA for the first time in decades, with the Janata Dal-United defeating the RJD by 21,391 votes.
The JSP's Mohammad Amjad secured 17,285 votes, gnawing into the RJD's traditional Yadav-Muslim support base.
Imamganj, a scheduled caste-reserved constituency in Gaya district, was retained by the NDA, with the Hindustani Awam Morcha candidate defeating the RJD nominee by a narrow margin of 5,945 votes.
Imamganj has historically leaned towards Opposition parties, shifting to the NDA only in 2020.
In the 2024 bypoll, JSP candidate Jitendra Paswan secured 37,103 votes, over six times the winning margin.
Sources attribute JSP's performance partly to the absence of Chirag Paswan's party in the fray, and his support for the NDA, but also noting his close ties with Kishor.
On the Ramgarh seat, which is located near the Bihar-Uttar Pradesh border and has a strong RJD legacy, winning it consistently for the last 34 years barring 2015, the BJP secured a narrow victory by just 1,362 votes.
The JSP candidate secured 6,513 votes. In Tarari, a Left stronghold in Bhojpur district, the BJP defeated Communist Party of India-Marxist-Leninist by 10,612 votes with the JSP candidate finishing third, securing 5,622 votes.
On accusations that the JSP helped the NDA in the bypolls, Sarwar Ali, the JSP's Bihar state general secretary, told Business Standard, "How can that be? There are parties that have been around for 25 to 30 years and still secured only 11 per cent of the vote, while we, a new party, obtained 10 per cent.
"How does that indicate we were spoilers? In Bihar, there is a history of votes being bought. That may have pushed us back a bit."
"But remember, our party was formed in October, and by November, we secured 10 per cent of the vote, and that too without any established machinery. And that was back then."
"If you visit now, you will see the level of enthusiasm people have for PK's party."
The JSP was formed in October and by November it secured 10 per cent of the vote, Ali said, slamming those who term JSP the BJP's B-team.
"Those who say that are the ones who feel threatened by us. They are the very people who have been exploiting and misleading the public and ran the jungle raj for 15 years."
Sanjay Kumar, co-director, Lokniti, says Kishor's appeal has resonated with sections of Bihar's youth, and politicians who have left their parent parties.
"But my own sense is that as the elections draw nearer it will eventually become a bipolar contest between the NDA and Mahagathbandhan" said Kumar, adding that the JSP could emerge a stronger force in subsequent assembly elections if it continued to work as hard as it had in the past 18 months.
Kumar said the JSP should feel happy if it managed to get 5 or 6 per cent in the assembly polls.
For the Bihar assembly polls, Kishor has announced that the JSP will contest all 243 seats of the state. But according to JSP insiders, the party's focus is on 2030.
"Prashant is a businessman before he is a politician, and given that the expected average turnout for JSP candidates is 5,000 to 6,000 votes and since Bihar has a significant number of seats where the margin between the winner and runner-up falls within that range he will capitalise on exactly that to showcase his presence," said another Jan Suraaj fellow.
In the 2020 assembly elections, 54 seats were won with a margin of less than 5,500 votes, while in 2015, the number was 40.
Given this, it is possible that the JSP could critically affect 15 to 20 per cent of seats in the upcoming elections.
While the JSP remains Bihar-focused as of now, Kishor has signalled that his political vision is not state-bound, and the JSP could contest in other states, especially the UP assembly polls in March 2027.
In February, he was seen sharing the stage with Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam chief Vijay Thalapathy on the party's first anniversary.
With the Tamil Nadu Assembly polls scheduled for April 2026, 'PK', as he is known to his colleagues, is a 'special adviser' to the TVK, which suggests that he hasn't completely stepped away from his earlier avatar as a political strategist.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff
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