A sharp rhetorical strike was launched by Sanjay Jaiswal of the Bharatiya Janata Party, who asserted that all 153 candidates fielded by Prashant Kishor’s newly formed Jan Suraaj Party in Bihar’s upcoming assembly elections will lose their deposits. Jaiswal made his claim during a press interaction in Bettiah, signalling the BJP’s intent to aggressively marginalise the JSP even before polling begins.
Jaiswal argued that Kishor’s decision to keep top leadership members out of the JSP candidate list amounted to a recognition of their electoral vulnerability. “If they had confidence in winning, their top leaders would be in the race,” Jaiswal said, adding that the JSP nomination slate reflected just how uncompetitive the party was. His comments reflected growing anxiety within the BJP regarding the potential impact of Kishor’s entry on the electoral arithmetic.
The JSP, established earlier this year, is contesting the full assembly slate of 243 seats for the first time. Prashant Kishor’s entrance into electoral politics is widely viewed as an effort to reset Bihar’s political environment. The party’s platform emphasises job creation, migration, and debt relief — issues frequently cited in recent surveys as pressing in Bihar. Despite the ambition, the BJP’s prediction of deposit forfeiture indicates a severe lack of fear for the new entrant among the established parties.
Political analysts note that losing one’s deposit in Indian elections occurs if a candidate fails to secure a minimum threshold of votes. The BJP’s public forecast of “all losing deposits” is thus an attempt to demoralise JSP units and supporters at the grassroots level. One veteran observer described the prediction as “psychological warfare” rather than a sober statistical estimate.
Kishor, for his part, has hit back, claiming intimidation and candidate-withdrawals orchestrated by the BJP. He alleged three of his nominated candidates were forced to withdraw under pressure and called it part of a broader “bullying strategy”. The BJP dismissed these allegations as “politically motivated” and claimed that every candidate withdrawal is voluntary and within the framework of electoral rules.
The political stakes in Bihar are high. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government is defending its position in an assembly election that will cover all 243 seats, with voting scheduled in two phases on 6 and 11 November and results slated for 14 November. The JSP seeks to insert a new dimension into the contest, challenging established narratives around caste, development and regional power brokers.
While the BJP confidently projects marginalisation of the JSP, some regional analysts caution that dismissing the new party may backfire. A youth migration-heavy landscape and rising joblessness have left space for alternative political brands. Kishor’s strategy to position embossed slogans like “Jan Suraaj” and his earlier campaign work suggest he is seeking to transcend conventional party structures. His challenge is the organisational scale-up required to contest 243 seats in a state as electorally complex as Bihar.
The BJP’s messaging also seeks to frame the JSP as a non-serious contender, highlighting what it sees as structural omissions such as the absence of known leadership faces in Kishor’s ticket list. It argues that if JSP had credible prospects, those leaders would have risked standing. Jaiswal used this to bolster the BJP’s own narrative of electoral inevitability, implicitly asking voters to reject “experimental politics” and stick with “tested governance”.
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