Bankipur bypoll | Rebirth of Prashant Kishor

The ace election strategist's Jan Suraaj Party comes of age with his fairytale bypoll victory in saffron 'fortress' BankipurWINNING RUN: Prashant Kishor waves at party workers during a victory march in Patna, Aug. 3. (Photo: ANI) Barely minutes after scripting the biggest upset in Bihar politics in recent times, Prashant Kishor was already looking beyond Bankipur. Celebrating his maiden electoral victory, the Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) chief issued what he called a “humble request” to Prime Minister Narendra Modi: replace the new Bihar chief minister Samrat Choudhary with “an honest, upright leader whom the state could be proud of”. There was no mistaking the message—Kishor, or PK as he is popularly known, was positioning himself as a challenger to Choudhary. More significantly, he was staking a claim to Bihar’s opposition space, offering himself up as an alternative to not just the BJP, but also the state’s other main party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD).