Bihar Elections 2025: Prashant Kishor Emerges as Third Alternative

With booth-level committees, youth support, and sharp attacks on Nitish Kumar’s NDA, Prashant Kishor positions Jan Suraj as Bihar’s possible third front in the high-stakes Assembly polls.

By MANISH ANAND

NEW DELHI, August 27, 2025 — Election strategist-turned-politician Prashant Kishor has become a central factor in Bihar’s upcoming Assembly elections. With three months to go before the state heads to polls, Kishor appears determined to shed his past image as the BJP’s pamphleteer and reinvent himself as the tormentor of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

Kishor’s Jan Suraj party claims to have built a grassroots cadre through booth-level committees across Bihar, largely driven by the state’s youth. In doing so, he is pitching himself as the architect of a third political alternative after three decades of bipolar politics between the NDA and the Mahagathbandhan. He has slotted the task of building a third alternative in Bihar after over three decades of bipolar politics in the state.

Gaining Bihar’s professionals from government services, Kishor’s knack of controlling the media limelight appears to have given a larger-than-life role in the upcoming Assembly elections in the state. Jan Suraj party is among several smaller outfits which have cropped in Bihar with aims to carve out spaces in the state politics.

Patna-based political observers are taking benign views of the prospects of Kishor’s outfit in the state. They argue that Bihar is ripe for a third alternative. Fatigue of three decades in seeing similar faces seems to be driving the positive views on Kishor’s outfit.

Incumbent Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar per Patna-based political observers is now reduced to a status of a camp follower of Brand Modi of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Kumar’s claim to fame of taming “Jungle Raj” of the 1990s in Bihar now seems to be in tatters amid a sense of lawlessness in Bihar. Murders, kidnapping, dacoity, and other crimes now hog the limelight in Bihar.

Kishor seems striking popular chords by questioning the prohibition policy of Kumar. He attacks the NDA government for having created a policy environment for the emergence of a parallel liquor mafia in Bihar. The alleged loss of businesses and revenue add to the ammunitions of Kishor against the ruling NDA government.

Former deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav, while being the CM face of the Mahagathbandhan, is still struggling to shrug off the label of “Jungle Raj”. With Yadav-led Mahagathbandhan still struggling to shed the image gained during the 1990s, Kishor is pitching his outfit as a third alternative.

Interestingly, the difference of total votes polled by the Mahagathbandhan and the NDA in the 2020 Assembly elections in Bihar was just a little over 11000. With strength so levelled between the two leading fronts, a third alternative gains a pivotal space in the formation of the next government in the state.

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About The Author

Manish Anand

Manish Anand is a senior journalist with more than two decades of hardcore reporting on beats such as Prime Minister’s Office, Parliament, BJP, Congress, Planning Commission, NITI Aayog, and scores of Union Ministries.

His past has been with The New Indian Express, The Asian Age/Deccan Chronicle, and The Statesman.

For about 15 years, Manish was also a regular commentator and host for talks on AIR on foreign affairs.

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