'No one can ignore PK's prediction about Nitish Kumar's party.'
In poll-bound Bihar, Jan Suraaj party founder Prashant Kishor's loud claim that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United will win no more than 25 seats in the 2025 state assembly election seems far-fetched.
PK's prediction has come at a time when Nitish Kumar has been doing everything to woo all sections, mainly women, by announcing one freebie after another for them to improve his party's performance from the last polls.
What has surprised political circles in Bihar is that PK has publicly announced that he will quit politics if the JD-U wins more seats than what he has predicted.
He also made it clear that Nitish Kumar will not become chief minister again and that the ruling National Democratic Alliance will not return to power.
PK asserted that people in Bihar want change this time, describing it as a dominant mood on the ground.
He also highlighted two factors related to Nitish Kumar's likely poor performance in the polls: One, a high rate of anti-incumbency against his government and two, his reported declining health.
Interestingly, PK is silent on the number of seats the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal would win in the upcoming election.
He has been targeting and attacking both the BJP and RJD equally but avoiding any statements about their performance in the polls.
Although PK is a former election strategist, and now the de facto chief of the Jan Suraaj party, a new political outfit, he is neither a psephologist nor an astrologer to calculate data and predict the likely performance of a party in the polls.
His claim about Nitish Kumar's party has drawn more attention than any other recent statement he has made.
This is because it is directly related to Bihar's long-serving chief minister, and the poll outcome will decide whether Nitish Kumar will continue as chief minister or be ousted from power after ruling the state for nearly 20 years since 2005 (barring the few months in 2014 when he made Jitan Ram Manjhi the CM).
It is a different matter that with the next Bihar assembly election a month away, the NDA is yet to officially name Nitish Kumar as its chief ministerial candidate.
This has deepened the suspense over the NDA's CM face this time, though the JD-U has asserted time and again that it will make no compromise on Nitish Kumar as the next chief minister.
JD-U leaders have been confidently saying that the party will improve its strike rate compared to the 2020 assembly polls.
The JD-U has made it clear to the BJP leadership in Delhi that it will contest more seats than the latter.
"Our party is eyeing to emerge as the single largest party after the polls," says a senior JD-U leader.
"The JD-U is not ready to take a political risk and play second fiddle to the BJP in state politics," he added.
In the 2020 assembly polls, Nitish Kumar's JD-U contested 115 seats and won 43 while the BJP contested 110 and won 74.
The JD-U blamed the Lok Janshakti Party-Ramvilas, headed by Chirag Paswan, for its low strike rate.
A Jan Suraaj party leader claimed PK is fully aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the parties because he worked closely with Narendra Modi in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and Nitish Kumar in the 2015 Bihar assembly polls.
"No one can ignore PK's prediction about Nitish Kumar's party in the Bihar polls," says the Jan Suraaj leader.
A political observer says PK's prediction in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls -- that the BJP would win 400 seats -- failed, as the party won only 240 Lok Sabha constituencies.
No one expects rhe JD-U to perform so badly as PK predicts in the Bihar polls this time.
The JD-U has at least a 15% vote share, which is not expected to fall below 10% in the comind polls.
After a series of populist schemes announced in recent weeks that carefully covered all sections of society, mainly women, Nitish Kumar has played his masterstroke to woo women voters.
He launched the Mukhya Mantri Mahila Rozgar Yojna on September 7 to promote women's self-employment by providing a first installment of Rs 10,000 as financial support via Direct Benefit Transfer to 27.7 million women, followed by Rs 2 lakh six months later.
A political analyst admitted that it is a very attractive scheme to target women. Never before has such a cash incentive for women surfaced in Bihar ahead of an election, and it could be a game-changer.
Nitish Kumar is widely seen as a favourite of the majority of the 35 million women voters in the state, an advantage that has been reflected in election after election, except for the 2020 assembly polls.
Since early 2024, PK has been loudly claiming that the JD-U will not cross 20 to 25 seats. In his latest statement on September 8, he reiterated that Nitish Kumar's party will not win more than 25 seats.
This is not the first time PK has made such a statement.
In January 2024, soon after Nitish Kumar dumped the RJD-led Mahagathbandhan and joined hands with the BJP, PK claimed that the JD-U would not win more than 20 seats in the 2025 assembly election.
He then stated that Nitish Kumar's decision to return to the BJP-led NDA was a result of his fear that the JD-U would not win more than five seats in the next assembly polls if it remained with the RJD-led Mahagathbandhan.
He reiterated the same prediction in March 2024 and October 2024.
PK is actively working hard to reach out to people and emerge as a political force, aiming to make a difference in the coming polls.
A large number of disillusioned supporters of the ruling NDA (mainly upper castes, a section of OBCs, EBCs, and Dalits), reportedly turn up at his public meetings to listen to him.
This is already posing a challenge to the BJP and JD-U because they fear a dent in their traditional vote bank by PK's Jan Suraaj party.
In the last eight months, several well-known faces from the ruling NDA have joined PK, and more are likely to join in the coming days.
The most prominent among them is former BJP MP from Purnea, Uday Singh, alias Pappu Singh, who belongs to the powerful upper caste Rajput community and comes from a political family.
Uday Singh was appointed the Jan Suraaj party's first national president.
Former JD-U president and former Union minister R C P Singh also joined the Jan Suraaj party.
Dozens of BJP and JD-U leaders have joined the Jan Suraaj party with the hope of getting a ticket to contest the polls.
The Jan Suraaj party has announced its intention to go it alone in all 243 assembly seats.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff
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