Jan Suraaj party founder and former election strategist, Prashant Kishor has claimed that there was something ‘wrong’ in the Bihar Election results, although he has no proof to back the charge. Kishor, whose party contested assembly elections across Bihar, claimed the voting trends did not match the feedback he and his party had received from the voters and that some numbers are 'not adding up'.
"Prima facie, some people are saying this. But I do not have proof. We can see something (wrong) has happened. But what exactly is wrong, we don't know. But this is not adding up," Kishor, whose party failed to secure even a single seat in the Bihar assembly election, told India Today in an interview on Sunday.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) data shows that as many as 236 of its 238 contesting candidates had to forfeit their deposits.
"Eight BJP MLAs get more than 1 lakh votes, both Deputy CM's got almost 1,22,000 votes (1,22,480 and 122, 408 votes). Somethings are not adding up," Kishor said.
Deputy CM and BJP leader Samrat Choudhary won 1,22, 480 votes defeating RJD's Arun Kumar by 45,800 votes from Tarapur seat. Another Deputy CM, Vijay Kumar Sinha, got 1,22,408 votes from the Lakhisarai seat, defeating the Congress party's Amresh Kumar by about 25000 votes.
The ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) secured a landslide victory, winning 202 of the 243 seats in the recently-concluded Bihar elections 2025. The results were announced on 14 November.
Within the NDA, the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) emerged as the single largest party, securing 89 seats, while the Janata Dal (United) (JD(U)) won 85 seats.
Kishor said the Opposition parties should seriously consider not just speaking on SIR (Special Intensive Revision). "In fact, from the time of making electoral toll to implementation of Model Code of Conduct, voting process, percentage and the fact that in the last hour apparently recording 10-15 per cent extra poll...17 C data is not released for three days.. all these things require a very serious thinking that can one expect a fair result in such an election," he said in the interview.
Kishor’s remarks echo Rahul Gandhi’s, who had called the Bihar verdict “surprising” and alleged that the election “was not fair from the very beginning.”
“This result in Bihar is truly surprising. We could not achieve victory in an election that was not fair from the very beginning,” Gandhi, the Congress MP, had said soon after the results were announced on 14 November.
Congress party, part of the opposition INDIA bloc, won 6 seats of the 61 it contested.
Kishor also accused the NDA of distributing money to thousands of women voters in Bihar to manipulate the election outcome.
"From the day the election was announced till voting day, women were handed ten thousand rupees. Even that amount wasn't enough for what they were being promised. They were told they would receive two lakh rupees in total, and this ten thousand was just the first instalment. If they voted for the NDA and Nitish Kumar, they would get the rest. In Bihar, or anywhere in the country, I don't recall a government ever handing out money like this to 50,000 women," Kishor told India Today.
On Saturday, Jan Suraaj dissolved all its organisational units, from the panchayat level to the state level, following the humiliating performance in the recently concluded Bihar polls. In a statement, party spokesperson Syed Masih Uddin said new units will be formed in the next one and a half months.
The decision was taken at the party's national council meeting in Patna, chaired by state president Manoj Bharti, it said. Kishor was also present in the meeting.
(With agency inputs)
