Prashant Kishor says he will not contest Bihar Elections 2025: ‘Will work to strengthen Jan Suraaj party’

Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor announced on Wednesday that he will not contest the Bihar Assembly Elections 2025. Kishor said the decision was made for the greater good of his party.

In an exclusive interview with news agency PTI, the former political strategist also said that a "tally of less than 150 seats" for Jan Suraaj will be considered a defeat.

"If Jan Suraaj Party wins the Bihar polls, it will have a nationwide impact. The compass of national politics will point in a different direction," Kishor asserted.

Bihar Assembly polls are scheduled to be held in two phases on November 6 and 11. The first phase will see voting for 121 seats, while 122 seats will be vote in the second and the final phase of the elections.

I won't contest the assembly polls: Prashant Kishor

"The party has decided that I should not contest the assembly polls. And therefore, the party has announced another candidate from Raghopur, against Tejashwi Yadav. It was a decision we took in the larger interest of the party. If I were to contest, it would have distracted me from the necessary organisational work", Kishor said.

Asked what he thought of his party’s prospects in the elections, the 48-year-old leader said, "I can say with certainty that we will be either win handsomely or receive a drubbing. I have been stating on record that I expect a tally of either fewer than 10 seats or more than 150 seats. There is no possibility of anything in between".

Kishor made the averment when asked whether his party would like to support the NDA or the INDIA bloc if the elections threw a hung assembly, terming a fractured mandate as an impossibility.

“A tally less than 150, even if it is 120 or 130, shall be a defeat for me. If we perform well, we will have the mandate to transform Bihar and position it among the top 10 most advanced states in the country. If we do not do well enough, it would mean the people have not shown enough confidence in us, and we must continue to carry on with our politics of the street and society.” Kishor told PTI.

First candidate list of BJP

This upcoming electoral contest will be between the NDA, led by the BJP, and Janata Dal (United), and the INDIA bloc, led by Tejashwi Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD).

The Bharatiya Janata Party released its first list of 71 candidates for the Bihar Assembly elections on October 14. The saffron party is contesting on 101 seats in the 243-member Bihar assembly as part of a seat-sharing formula between the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) partners.

The party has fielded Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary from Tarapur and Vijay Kumar Sinha from the Lakhisarai assembly seat in the first list.