Huge Setback for BJP: Prashant Kishor Turns the Tide in Bankipur, Congress Retains Datia, BJP Manjalpur
Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Aug 3: In inconsequential elections for three by-polls in state Assembly constituencies in three states, the ruling BJP on Monday suffered significant setback, while the party was able to retain only one seat.
The most shocking for the BJP was the defeat of its candidate for the Bankipur byelection in Bihar where it suffered a defeat in a seat that the party had been winning for the last 31 years and currently was being held by the party’s national president Nitin Nabin which elevation to the Rajya Sabha and vacating the seat caused the byelection.
Even in Datia in Madhya Pradesh, the BJP failed to change its fortune despite changing the candidate who had lost the seat to the Congress in the general elections in 2023 and again lost to the Congress. The party, however, was able to maintain its stranglehold in Gujarat where it won the Manjalpur seat in Vadodara city with a big margin despite a low polling having registered mere 37 per cent turnout.
The most watched bypoll was Bankipur where the Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) founder president Prashant Kishor, the election strategist turned politician, had thrown an open challenge to the might of the BJP entering into its age-old stronghold. The BJP had held the seat continuously since 1995 and even in the bypoll did not take any chances fielding all its state level top guns for the month-long campaign with Mr Nabin himself visiting his constituency multiple times to campaign for the BJP candidate Neeraj Sinha.
Kishor, who so far helped other parties to formulate election strategies and for the first time threw himself in the poll arena, held lead almost in every round of counting finally winning the seat by a margin of over 18,000 votes, while Mr Nabin had won the seat in the Assembly elections in the state last year by a margin of over 51,000 votes.
After his poll victory, Kishor promised reporters immediate improvements in Bankipur. “In 3 months, you will see a visible change in Bankipur. But for that, you will have to give me 3 months,” he said. “My doors are open not only for the people of Bankipur, but for the entire Bihar…I have not done something extraordinary here, but still demolished the BJP’s stronghold of 30 years in just 30 days,” he added.
He also thanked the voters of Bankipur and vowed to work for the development of Bihar and launched a direct attack on the chief minister Samrat Choudhary. “The people of Bihar have sent a message to the BJP’s central leadership that they should appoint a good person as the chief minister of Bihar. They do not want a person with a criminal background or questionable conduct, character, or reputation to lead Bihar,” Kishor told reporters in Patna.
Bihar Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary congratulated Kishor for his poll triumph. “In the grand festival of democracy, the people have chosen Jan Suraaj in the Bankipur Assembly by-election. Respecting this decision of the people, I heartily congratulate Prashant Kishor on his victory,” he wrote on X.
The Jan Suraaj had failed to open its account in its 2025 debut in state polls. Kishor hadn’t fought then. A year later, he has grabbed a seat in the capital. Bankipur has now become the first-ever seat won by both the JSP and Kishor.
In Madhya Pradesh, the defeat of the BJP candidate Ashutosh Tiwari in Datia is being considered to be the rout of the party strongman and former state home minister Narottam Mishra who had lost the seat to the Congress in the 2023 elections and was not fielded by the party in the bypoll. The worst was, the BJP continued to suffer deficit even in the booths in Mishra’s hometown, the pockets where the ruling party should felt safest.
The BJP also trailed at the polling booth associated with its district president, Raghuvir Kushwaha. These were not merely small booth-level reverses. They told the larger story of the Datia by-election the BJP changed its candidate, but could not change the political structure surrounding him.
Congress veteran Ghanshyam Singh’s victory over BJP’s Ashutosh Tiwari by a margin of over 6,000 votes was not just one candidate defeating another, it was the outcome of a political contradiction the BJP could never resolve. The party did not re-nominate Mishra, apparently acknowledging the message of the 2023 Assembly election, when Congress’s Rajendra Bharti defeated the then home minister by 7,742 votes. But even after denying Mishra the ticket, Tiwari was just treated by the party as a proxy of the former minister.
The bypoll in Datia was necessitated after a Delhi court in April this year sentenced Congress MLA Rajendra Bharti to three years’ imprisonment in a cheating case, leading to the termination of his assembly membership.
In the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the union home minister Amit Shah’s home state of Gujarat, the BJP continued to retain its dominance with the party candidate Satendrabhai Patel (Satish Patel) winning the bypoll by a margin of 30,630 votes over his Congress rival Bhikhabhai Rabari. The 20-round counting saw Satendrabhai bagging 55481 votes, while his Congress rival Bhikhabhai amassed 24851 votes. NOTA received only 2247 votes as BJP registered a landslide win to keep the assembly seat in their own grasp.
The bypoll was necessitated following the death of senior BJP MLA and former Gujarat minister Yogesh Patel on June 2 after a prolonged illness. Yogesh Patel, an eight-term BJP legislator, represented the Raopura assembly constituency in Vadodara five times between 1990 and 2007 before shifting to the newly created Manjalpur seat after delimitation. He won the Manjalpur seat in 2012, 2017 and 2022, completing eight consecutive victories in the Gujarat assembly over a span of 36 years.
